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LIBHARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




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MAN, THE MICROCOSM, 



BY 



ABRAHAM COLES, M.D., Ph.D., LL.D., 



With Portrait of the Author and full-page Illustrations of 

"Ambrose Pare," " Edward Jenner," "Andreas Vesalius," 

"William Harvey," "Prof. Tulp and his Pupils" 

BY Rembrandt, the "Apollo Belvedere," the 

" Venus de Medici," " Theodor Billroth 

and his Clinical Assistants," etc. 

edited by his son 

/ 

Jonathan Ackerman Coles, A.M., M.D. 



Fifth (Physician's) Edition. 

( SEP 3 

New York: ^"-^K Of v 

D. appleton and company ^"ifkS^ 

1892 






COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY 

Jonathan Ackerman Coles. 



NEWARK, N. J. 
ADVEKTISER PRINTING HOUSE, 

1892 



CONTENTS. 

List of Illustrations, - . . _ Page vii 
Preface, Page i 

Centennial Address, - . _ . Page 5 

The Microcosm, Pages 13-79 

Analysis, --.--._ Page 15 

Geologic Prophecy of Man's Coming, - - Page 17 
Scriptural Anticipation of the Doctrine, Page 18 
General View — Man Supreme, - - - Page 20 

Christian Science, Page 21 

Infidel Science, P^ge 22 

Common Sense, Page 23 

Invocation, ----_.. Page 24 
Flesh Garment— Skin, its Moral Character, Page 24 

Pathognomy, Page 25 

Interior View— Skin Dissected, - - Page 27 

Blending of Contraries— Structural Details, Page 28 
Voluntary Muscles — Their Office and Work, Page 30 
Muscular Dynamics — Directing Power 

Where? - - Page 32 

Cranium — Soul's Firmament — Brain, - - Page 34 
Mind's Organ — City of the Dead, - - Page 35 
The Eye, and its Correlative, - - - Page 41 



iv CONTENTS. 

Light has no Manifesting Power without 

THE Eye, ------- Page 41 

Light lost in the Eye reappears in the 

Consciousness, Page 43 

Tears — Sleep, its Resuscitating Power- 
Organic Life, - Page 44 

Spiritual Analogies, - - . - - Page 47 
Congenital Blindness — Awards of the Last 

Day, - - Page 48 

Asylums for the Blind, . . - _ Page 49 
Asylums for the Deaf and Dumb, - - Page 50 
Hearing— Power of Sound— Music of Nature, Page 51 
Music of Art — Instrumental and Vocal, - Page 52 
Voice — Air of Expiration, its Transmuta- 
tions, - Page 53 

Speech, Accountable Self-Recording — Math- 
ematical Problem, ----- Page 55 
Its Social Uses — The Word Made Flesh, Page 56 
Articulation— Nose— Mouth— Smell— Taste, Page 57 
Smell— Odors, Their Subtlety and Impon- 
derability, Page 58 

Breath of Life, Natural and Spiritual, Page 59 

Theopneusty, -..--. Page 59 
Taste — Elimination and Waste — Nothing 

Lost, Page 60 

Human Want and Divine Supply, - - Page 62 



CONTENTS. V 

Lord's Prayer — Hodiernal Bread— Hygienic 

Wisdom, Page 64 

Ingestion — Digestion — Assimilation, - Page 65 
Heart— Circulation — Nutrition — Blood Ex- 
hilarations, Page 67 

Heart — Seat of the Affections — Visceral 

Modifications, Page 69 

Woman— Sex — Unity in Difference, - - Page 70 
Love of the Sexes — Ends Answered, - Page 71 
True Love — Spurious Love, - - - - Page 73 
Charity — Physician — Opiferque per Orbem 

DicoR, Page 75 

Nosology — Auscultation of Heart and 

Lungs, Page 76 

Physician's Character and Aims — Science 

Progressive, Page 77 

Spiritual Maladies — Christ the Great Phy- 
sician, - - - - _ _ . Page 78 

Death— Immortality, Page 79 

Works of Abraham Coles, - - - Page 81 

Critics and Criticisms, . . _ . Page 87 

Richard Grant White; Rev. Samuel Irenseus Prime, D. D.; Wm. 
Cullen Bryant; James Russell Lowell; "Christian Quarterly Re- 
view;" "The Boston Transcript;" Lady Jane Franklin; William 
C. Prime; Rev. Philip Schaff, D. D.; "The Republican," Spring- 
field; George Ripley, the New York "Tribune;" Rev. James 
McCosh, D. D.; Hon. Richard Stockton Field; Newark "Adver- 
tiser;" Edmund C. Stedman; Rev. Robert Turnbull, D. D.; John 



vi CONTENTS. 

G. Whittier; Rev. S. I. Prime, D. D.; George Ripley, New York 
"Tribune;" Rev. James McCosh, D. D. 

Gov. Daniel Haines; Rev. George Dana Boardman, D. D. ; Rev. 
Charles Hodge, D. D.; Hon. Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen; 
Prof. Robert Lowell, D. D.; Prof. Stephen Alexander; Oliver 
Wendell Holmes; William Cullen Bryant; Chancellor Henry Wood- 
hull Green; Charles H. Spurgeon. 

Hon. William Earl Dodge; Thomas Gordon Hake, M. D. ; New 
York "Observer;" the New York "Times;" "The Critic;" John 
Y. Foster; Hon. Justin McCarthy; the "Examiner and Chronicle;" 
Hon. Horace N. Congar; Rev. William Hague, D. D.; Newark 
"Advertiser;" Rev. George Dana Boardman; Rev. A. S. Patton, 
D. D.; Hon. Joseph P. Bradley; John G. Whittier. 

The Rt. Hon. John Bright, M. P.; Rev. H. G. Weston, D. D.; 
Rev. Horatius Bonar, D. D.; Rev, Alexander McLaren, D. D.; 
Adele M. Fielde; Elizabeth C. Kinney; "The Book Buyer," 
Charles Scribner's Sons; Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler, D. D. ; the New 
York "Tribune;" Rev. Frederic W. Farrar, D. D., F. R. S. ; Rev. 
A. H. Tuttle, D. D.; Rev. Charles S. Robinson, D. D. ; Hon. 
George Hay Stuart; Rev. D. R. Frazer, D. D.; Charles M. Davis; 
Rev. A. H. Lewis, D. D.; S. W. Kershaw, F. S. A.; J. K. Hoyt; 
Rev. George Dana Boardman, D. D. ; Rev. Lewis R. Dunn, D. D.; 
Rev. Asahel C. Kendrick, D. D.; George MacDonald; Rev. Philip 
Schaff, D. D.; the " New York Tribune;" the "Newark Daily 
Advertiser ;" the Rev. Robert S. Mac Arthur, D. D.; the Rev. Ed- 
ward Judson, D.D.; Bishop John H. Vincent, D.D., LL.D.; the Rt. 
Rev. Phillips Brooks, D.D.,LL.D.; the Rt. Rev. John Williams, 
D.D., LL.D. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

^ Steel Engraving of Dr. Abraham Coles, 

by Alexander Hay Ritchie, - - Frontispiece 

u The Apollo Belvedere. Artotype copy of the origi- 
nal. ------ Opp. page 20. 

This celebrated marble statue was found in the Fifteenth Century, 
at Antium (Capo d' Anzo), Italy, the birthplace of the emperor 
Nero, who is believed to have brought it to Antium from the 
Sacred Shrine at Delphi. Delphi, situated on the southern side 
of Mount Parnassus, was, to a certain extent, protected by the 
sanctity of its oracle and the presence of its god. According to 
Herodotus, the vast riches accumulated in the temple at Delphi 
(City of the Sun) led Xerxes, after having forced the pass of Ther- 
mopylae, to attempt its capture. The effort, however, is said to have 
failed, by reason of the intervention of Apollo. The sculptor of 
this wonderful statue is unknown. It was placed through Michael 
Angelo in the Belvedere of the Vatican. It was taken by the French 
to Paris in 1797, but was restored to Rome in 1815. 

^ Andreas Vesalius, - - - - Opp. page 24 

He was born in Brussels in 1514; began his studies in Louvain 
and prosecuted them in Italy. He made himself master of Hebrew, 
Greek and Arabic at the age of twenty. When only twenty-eight 
years old, he published his great work on Anatomy, De Corporis 
Humani Fabrica. Senac calls it the discovery of a new world; and 
Haller speaks of it as "an immortal work by which all that had been 
written before was almost superseded." In it he exposed the 
errors of the Galenian school, and broke the spell which for so many 
ages had held the medical world in thraldom. The work met with 



viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

the fiercest opposition, but the author's reputation steadily increased. 
In 1544 he was made chief physician to the Emperor Charles V, and 
afterwards to Philip II. In 1563 or 1564 he suddenly left Madrid to 
make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, for reasons not certainly known. 
The common story is that while he was examining the body of a 
Spanish nobleman who had died under his charge, as he laid open 
the chest, the bystanders imagined they saw a tremulous motion of 
the heart, whereupon he was denounced to the Inquisition as guilty 
of murder and impiety. Where superiority of knowledge was 
esteemed a crime, however innocent, he was sure to be condemned, 
but through the influence of Philip, his punishment was commuted 
to a pilgrimage. On his voyage back to accept the Paduan profes- 
sorship of Anatomy, tendered him by the Venetian senate, he was 
wrecked on the Island of Zante, where, it is said, he died of starva- 
tion, October 15, 1564. 

The original painting is the work of the French artist, F. Ham- 
man. Its design, as we construe it, is to illustrate the pious spirit 
in which the great anatomist was accustomed to begin his investiga- 
tions. With eyes turned reverently upward to a crucifix on the 
wall, he prefaces the work of dissection with devout prayer to the 
Divine Redeemer, the Incarnate Word, Maker of all things, Lord 
of life. Lord also of the Sciences, and "that True Light which lighteth 
every man that cometh into the world." This view of the design of 
the picture makes its accommodation to the purposes of the entire 
poem obvious and easy. Possibly, by a stretch of courtesy, the 
invocation found on the twenty-fourth page may be allowed to 
stand for the prayer supposed to be offered. 

" Dear God! this body, which, with wondrous art," &c.— P. 24. 

Rembrandt's " Lesson in Anatomy." Prof. Tulp and 
his Pupils. All Portraits. 1632. - Opp. page 31. 

The original of this picture is found at the Hague. It formerly 
stood in the Anatomy School of Amsterdam, but was purchased by 
the King of Holland for 32,000 guilders (;i^2,70o). It is described as 
a "most wonderful painting and one of the artist's finest works," 
Sir Joshua Reynolds remarks: "To avoid making it an object dis- 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. ix 

agreeable to look at, the figure is but just cut at the wrist; showing 
the Jlexor muscles ol the fingers. There are seven other portraits, 
colored like nature itself, fresh and highly finished; one of the 
figures behind has a paper in his hand on which are written the 
names of the rest, with Rembrandt's own, and the date 1632. The 
dead body is perfectly well drawn (a little foreshortened) and seems 
to have been just w^ashed. Nothing can be more truly the color of 
dead flesh. The legs and feet, which are nearest the eye, are in 
shadow; the principal light which is on the body is by that means 
preserved of a compact form." 

" The subject Muscles, girded to fulfill 
The lightning mandates of the sovereign will, — 
Th' abounding means of motion, wherein lurk 
Man's infinite capacity for work." 

Harvey Demonstrating to Charles I his Theory of 
THE Circulation of the Blood, - Opp. page 67. 

William Harvey was born in Folkstone, England, April i, 1578; 
died in London, June 6, 1657. In 1628, he published his great dis- 
covery, made, it is said, but not matured, nine years before, in a 
work entitled Exercitatio Anatomica de Alotu Cordis et Sanguinis in 
Animalibus , and dedicated it to Charles I. He lived to be considered 
as the first anatomist and physician of his time, and to see his dis- 
covery universally acknowledged. 

The original of the above picture is by an English painter 
(Robert Hannah). 

" Make room, my Heart, that pour'st thyself abroad. 
Deep, central, awful mystery of God! 

***** 
Where Auricle and Ventricle with power 
Repeat their grasp five thousand times an hour." 

\/The Venus de Medici. By Cleomenes, the Athenian. 
B. C. 200. Opp. page 70. 

This famous antique marble statue was exhumed in the villa of 
Hadrian, near TivoH, in the Seventeenth Century, in eleven pieces. 
After remaining for some time in the Medici palace at Rome, it was 



X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

taken to Florence and is now in the " Tribune." It was in the 
Louvre at Paris from 1796 to 1815. " From its exquisite proportions 
and perfection of contour, the Venus de Medici has become the 
most celebrated standard of female form extant." 

The following rules obtained by measurements of Greek statues 
are adopted by sculptors: 

"First — As to height, tastes differ, but the Venus de Medici is 
about five feet five inches in height. This is held by many sculptors 
and artists to be the most admirable stature for a woman. For a 
woman of this height, one hundred and thirty-eight pounds is the 
proper weight, and if she be well formed she can stand another ten 
pounds without greatly showing it. When her arms are extended 
she should measure from tip of middle finger to tip of middle finger 
just five feet five inches, exactly her own height. The length of 
her hand should be just a tenth of that, and her foot just a seventh, 
and the diameter of her chest a fifth. From her thighs to the ground 
she should measure just what she measures from the thighs to the 
top of the head. The knee should come exactly midway between 
the thigh and the heel. The distance from the elbow to the middle 
finger should be the same as the distance from the elbow to the 
middle of the chest. From the top of the head to the chin should 
be just the length of the foot, and there should be the same dis- 
tance between the chin and the armpits. The waist measure twenty- 
four inches, and the bust thirty-four inches, if measured from under 
the arms, and forty-three if over them. The upper arm should 
measure thirteen inches and the wrist six. The calf of the leg 
should measure fourteen and one-half inches; the thigh, twenty- 
five, and the ankle, eight. There is another system of measure- 
ments which says that the distance twice around the thumb should 
go once around the wrist; twice around the wrist, once around the 
throat; twice around the throat, once around the waist, and so on. 

As for coloring and shape, here is the code laid down by the 
Arabs, who say that a woman should have these things: Black — 
Hair, eyebrows, lashes and pupils. White — Skin, teeth and globe 
of the eye. Red — Tongue, lips and cheeks. Round — Head, neck, 
arms, ankles and waist. Long — Back, fingers, arms and limbs. 
Large — Forehead, eyes and lips. Narrow^ — Eyebrows, nose and 
feet. Small— Ears, bust and hands." 



y 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xi 

r/ Ambrose Pare (1509-1590). "The Father of French 
Surgery," Opp. page 75. 

Brantoine relates that Henry III took good care to shield his 
surgeon (Pare), who was suspected of being a Huguenot, from the 
dangers of St. Bartholomew's night, keeping him in his own room 
and motioning him not to move therefrom. Theodor Billroth says 
Fare's treatises on the treatment of gun-shot wounds are classical, 
and he has rendered himself immortal by the introduction of the 
ligature for bleeding vessels after amputation. 

Edward Jenner (1749-1823), - - Opp. page 77. 

Edward Jenner had his attention directed to the discovery of 
vaccination as a preventive of smallpox by hearing a young milk- 
maid say she could not take the disease because she had already 
had the cowpox. Upon investigation, he "satisfied himself of the 
efficacy of inoculation with the virus of the cowpox to prevent 
smallpox, and next ascertained, with equal certainty, that the 
former disease could be communicated from one human being to 
another, without having recourse to the original vaccine matter." 
In 1858 a statue of Jenner was placed in Trafalgar Square, London. 



^J 



Prof. Theodor Billroth, M. D., and his Clinical 
Assistants, Vienna. - - - Opp. page 78. 

'*Each year adds something — many things ye know 
Your sires knew not a hundred years age." — Page 78. 



PREFACE. 

rr^HE following Address and Poem were delivered 
before the Medical Society of New Jersey at its 
Centennial Meeting, held in Rutgers College, New 
Brunswick, N. J., January 24, 1866, and published with 
its Transactions. Prepared amid the hurry and distrac- 
tions of other duties, and with special reference to the 
demands and limitations of the occasion, the Poem, as 
originally delivered, fell short of the author's design, 
which was to produce, if possible, a tolerably complete 
compendium of that noblest, most necessary, and yet, 
strange to say, that most neglected of all the sciences — 
Anthropology — relieved of some of the dryness belong- 
ing to the ordinary modes of presentation. 

The hope of supplying in some measure existing 
deficiencies, led the author, after the manuscript had 
passed into the hands of the printer, to avail himself of 
the short intervals which transpired between the receiv- 
ing and returning of the proofs, to castigate some parts 



ii PREFACE. 

and expand others not sufficiently developed, so that 
besides alterations there have been additions to the 
amount of two hundred lines and more since that first 
reading. He regrets that the hurry of the press joined 
to the hurry arising from other causes, afforded so little 
opportunity for putting in practice the sound inculca- 
tion of Horace, concerning the duty of delay and care- 
ful finish: limcB labor et mora. With more time at his 
disposal, he thinks he could have done better justice to 
the fine capabilities of a subject, vi^hich the writers of 
verse, ransacking heaven and earth for a theme, have 
hitherto for the most part strangely overlooked. This 
remarkable omission is the more to be wondered at, 
because many of our best poets have been physicians; 
and for some reason or other 

*' the wise of ancient days adored 
One power of Physic, Melody and Song." 

Dr. Armstrong's well-known Poem in four books, 
written in blank verse, and first published in 1744, 
entitled, " The Art of Preserving Health," does, indeed, 
treat partially and incidentally of physiological 



PREFACE. iii 

matters, and may therefore be regarded as forming 
in some sort an exception to the general rule of 
neglect affirmed above. It has for its topics — Air, 
Diet, Exercise and the Passions — discussed of course, 
in conformity with the design of the Poem, according 
to their sanitary bearings, each forming the subject 
of a separate book. The work was everywhere read 
and admired; and remains to this day, according to 
the poet Campbell, " the most successful attempt in our 
language to incorporate material science with poetry." 
While the critic admits that "the practical maxims of 
science, which the Muse has stamped with imagery and 
attuned to harmony, have so far an advantage over 
those delivered in prose, that they become more agree- 
able and permanent acquisitions of the memory," he, in 
common with others, seems to think, that there inhere 
in such subjects, nevertheless, difficulties of a most 
formidable kind, a perversity and stubbornness of 
nature, which are never overcome except by some rare 
felicity of fortune or surprising exertion of genius. 
Hence he says: "the author's Muse might be said to 
show a professional intrepidity in choosing her subject; 



iv PREFA CE. 

and, like the physician, to prolong the simile, she 
escaped on the whole with little injury. * * * What 
is explained of the animal economy is obscured by no 
pedantic jargon, but made distinct and to a certain 
degree picturesque to the conception." So too in his 
final summing up of the merits of the Poet, he does not 
fail to emphasize that special one, due " to the hand 
which has reared poetical flowers on the dry and dif- 
ficult ground of philosophy." 

But there is another and much older example of this 
morganatic marriage, as some might call it, between 
poetry and natural science — one antedating the Chris- 
tian era and the time of Virgil. Lucretius, born in the 
year before Christ 95, composed a Latin poem in heroic 
hexameters, entitled £>e Reriim Natura. It is divided 
into six books; and is based on the doctrines of Epi- 
curus, who taught that the world was formed from a 
fortuitous concourse of atoms. 

The first two books expound the nature and proper- 
ties of these ultimate atoms or seeds of things, varying 
in shape and infinite in number, moving in void space 
infinite in extent, with great swiftness, some in right 



PREFACE. V 

lines, others declining therefrom, until united to each 
other after innumerable tentative contacts, all the ob- 
jects in the universe are generated — which objects form 
the subject matter of the remaining four books. 

The third book is taken up with a description of the 
mind (animus) and soul (anima) maintaining that both 
are corporeal, acting on the body by material impact ; 
that the substance of the mind and soul is not simple, 
but composed of four subtle elements — heat, vapor, air, 
and a nameless fourth substance on which sensibility 
depends, and is, so to speak, the soul of the soul; that 
the soul cannot be separated from the body without 
destruction to both, and that death is the end of man. 

The fourth book treats of the senses, averring that 
images* of exquisite subtlety are constantly emitted 
(shed, peeled off as it were) from the surface of objects, 

* Democritus first, Epicurus afterwards called these eUcjla Kal 
TV770VC, i. e. eidola and types; Cicero, images; Quintilian, figures; 
Catius, spectres; Lucretius, eflSgies, images, simulacra, species, 
figures, exuviae, spoils, quasi membranes, cortices, etc. Epicurus 
and Lucretius supposed spectres of the dead to be pellicles thrown 
off from corpses which were so thin as to pass through coffins and 
all other obstructions. 



Vl PREFACE. 

which flying everywhere and impinging on the organs 
of sight produce* vision; that voice and sound are cor- 
poreal images, (as proved by their abrading the throat 
after long or loud speaking,) which strike the ear and 
produce hearing. Taste and odors are accounted for; 
and imagination and thought traced to images which 
penetrate the body through the senses. Sleep is next 
spoken of, and the various causes of dreams — the book 
closing with a discourse on love and matters pertaining 
thereto. 

The fifth book treats of the origin of the world — 
land, sea, sky, sun, stars, the movements of the heavens^ 
the changes of the seasons and the progress of man, 
society, institutions and sciences — while the sixth 
book, being the last, attempts an explanation of the 
most striking natural appearances, such as lightning, 
thunder, clouds, rainbow, snow, wind, hail, earthquakes 
and volcanoes, concluding with a discourse on diseases, 
and a learned and elegant description of a pest which 
in the time of the Peloponnesian war desolated Athens. 

The philosophy of this celebrated Poem is of course 
false and absurd, but in regard to its poetical merit 



PREFACE, vii 

there can be but one opinion. The poet's mastery over 
his .materials is complete. Under his magic touch, 
speculations the most abstruse and technicalities the 
most refractory, lose their intractableness, and are con- 
verted into forms of exquisite beauty and grace. Great, 
undoubtedly, are the attractions of a virgin theme. It 
added to the rapture of Milton, " soaring in the high 
reason of his fancy with his garland and singing robes 
about him," the knowledge that he pursued 

" Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme." 

So Lucretius, in the opening lines of the fourth book, 

does not conceal his satisfaction that he is first in the 

field: 

"Avia Pieridum peragro loca, nullius ante 
Trita solo: juvat integros adcedere funteis 
Atque haurire; juvatque novos decerpere flores, 
Insignemque meo capiti petere inde coronam, 
Unde prius nulli velarint tempora Musae."* 

* The Muses' pathless places I explore, 
Worn by the sole of no one's foot before : 
'Tis sweet to untouched fountains to repair 
And drink; 'tis sweet to pluck new flowers; and there 
To seek a famous chaplet for my brow 
Whence have the Muses veiled no head till now. 

The literalness of this translation must atone for its lack of elegance. 



Viii PREFACE. 

The author of the Microcosm, enjoying, in common 
with these great masters of song, the felicity of a sub- 
ject unprofaned by previous handling, regrets that he 
does not possess their power to do it justice. He thinks 
it strange — that while amid the ignorances and the vani- 
ties of a false philosophy two thousand years ago, the 
poet's heart, instinctively discerning the excellent 
beauty there is in God's works, ver as pulchriiudines reru7n, 
was stirred to sing, and in such a manner as to charm 
the ear of the world 

" Principio ccelum ac terras, camposque liquentes, 
Lucentemque globum lunae, titaniaque astra 
Spiritus intus alit; totamque infusa per artus 
Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet " — 

no one has been found in these last days, after so long 
waiting, sufficiently kindled and inspired by the excit- 
ing discoveries and revelations of modern science, to 
undertake the task of lifting them into the sphere of 
poetry, and glorifying them with its light. If there is 
nothing so mean but it has a divine side — if materials 
for poetry be not wanting in the most common things, 
a floating cloud, a spear of grass, or a handful of dust 



PREFACE. ix 

even — how much more may this be said of so lofty a 
subject as Man, " the mirror of the power of God " 
reflecting His Maker's image in every part, in the 
minutest blood-disk and elementary cell, no less than 
in the complex whole of his most wonderful organism! 
In short, if it be the proper business of Poetry to deal 
with subjects of human interest, what can be more 
human than humanity itself? Or if its high aim be to 
discover throughout creation the dazzling tokens of the 
Beautiful, the ro uaXov which is only another name for 
the Divine, where else in all the universe do the shin- 
ing footprints of the First Good and the First Fair 
appear so radiant or so recent as in His last and crown- 
ing work, the Human Form ? The failure of the 
present attempt to show it, would prove nothing 
against the grand poetic possibilities of such a theme. 
Still it would be true 

*' How charming is divine philosophy ? 
Not harsh, and crabbed, as dull fools suppose. 
But musical as is Apollo's lute, 
And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets 
Where no crude surfeit reigns." 



THE MICROCOSM. 

"KNOW THYSELF." 



"It is most true that of all things in the universe man is the 
most composite, so that he was not without reason called by the 
ancients Microcosm, or the little world (Mundus Minor)" — Bacon. 

"What a piece of work is Man! How noble in reason! how 
infinite in faculties ! in form and moving, how express and admir- 
able ! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a 
God !" — Shakespeare. 

"I esteem myself as composing a solemn hymn to the Author 
of our bodily frame, and in this I think there is more true piety 
than in sacrificing to Him hecatombs of oxen, or burnt offerings of 
the most costly perfumes, for I first endeavor to know Him myself, 
and afterwards to show Him to others, to inform them how great is 
His wisdom, His virtue. His goodness." — Galen. 

"I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." 
— David. 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



Medical Society of New Jersey 

AT ITS 

CENTENARY ANNIVERSARY, 

January 24TH, 1866, 

BY 

ABRAHAM COLES, M. D. 



ADDRESS. 

npHE Medical Society of New Jersey, hoary with 
the frosts of a hundred winters, and mindful of 
its just honors as the oldest organization of the kind 
on the Continent, has here met, in a place not far from 
the spot where it was first cradled, to celebrate by 
special and festal observances, this its first Centenary 
Anniversary. 

It certainly affords remarkable proof of original 
vigor, and reflects infinite credit upon its earlier and 
later membership, that, except for a brief space during 
the Revolutionary War, the Society has never failed to 
hold regular meetings. In the midst of a thousand 
changes, the throes of revolution, and the fall of 
empires, it has stood unmoved. Nations have been 
born since it came into being. It is older than the 
Republic. x\t the time of its formation, its founders 
were living under British rule, not dreaming of revolt. 



6 ^ ADDJ^ESS. 

If they shared in the popular ferment caused by the 
passage of the odious Stamp Act by Parliament a few- 
months before, they probably had no expectation of 
seeing matters pushed to the point of open rupture, 
and forcible separation from the mother country. 

The first stone of the Temple erected to Freedom 
had not yet been laid. The Society was some years old 
when the first blow for Independence was struck. 
Lexington and Concord, 

" Where once the embattled farmers stood, 
And fired the shot heard round the world," 

were insignificant villages unknown to fame. The 
brain that conceived the Declaration of Independence 
was probably revolving far other ideas. On the dazzled 
mind of no seer or statesman had dawned the unparal- 
leled splendors of the Nation that was to be — the 
constellar glories of that Imperial Commonwealth,, 
composed of a resplendent Sisterhood of States, mighty 
and populous and ever increasing, joined indissolubly 
together so as to form one vital organic whole, E pluri- 
bus Unum, such as is witnessed to-day. 



ADDRESS. 7 

Those fourteen physicians and surgeons, (let their 
names be always mentioned with honor,) who, foremost 
in an enlightened appreciation of the advantages accru- 
ing to science and humanity from such an organization, 
on the 23d of July, A. D. 1766, laid the foundations of 
this Society — have long since passed away. "After 
they had served their own generation by the will of 
God they fell on sleep, and were laid unto their fathers." 
How inspiring the vision, could they have been per- 
mitted to penetrate the future and foresee all that has 
since happened; the mighty changes which have taken 
place; the struggles and triumphs by means of which 
this divinely favored and foreordained Nation has been 
gloriously carried forward to the culminating felicity 
of the present time, when Peace once more smiles 
through all the land — a glad and righteous Peace — and 
Slavery, its deadliest foe, the inextinguishable cause of 
strife and hatred, ever at work to mar 

" The unity and married calm of States," 

has, albeit at an immense cost of treasure and blood, by 
a perpetual and unalterable constitutional enactment, 



<^ ADDRESS. 

been banished and driven out of every part of the 
national domain. How amazing the contrast between 
now and then! Then there were no railroads, no 
steamships, no telegraphs, no Hoe's lightning print- 
ing presses, no photography, no chloroform. In like 
manner who can tell what new and startling discoveries 
will be made in the centuries to come. Methinks 

" It were a pleasant thing 

To fall asleep with all one's friends. 
To pass with all our social ties 

To silence from the paths of men, 
And every hundred years to rise 

And learn the world, and sleep again, 
To sleep through terms of mighty wars, 

And wake on science grown to more, 
On secrets of the brain, the stars, 

As wild as aught of fairy lore, 
And all that else the years will show. 

The Poet-forms of stronger hours, 
The vast Republics that may grow. 

The Federations and the Powers. 
■Sfr * * * * * 

So sleeping, so aroused from sleep. 

Through sunny decades new and strange. 
Or gay quinquenniads, would we reap 

The flower and quintessence of change." 



ADDRESS. g 

Members of the Society! called to address you in the 
character of President on an occasion so extraordinary, 
I can say with all sincerity, that howevergrateful it may 
• be to my feelings to be the recipient of so distinguished 
an honor, the gratification is largely tempered with the 
fear that I may not be able to justify the partiality of 
your selection. My misgivings, I confess, are greater, 
because of my having ventured upon untrodden paths, 
and attempted the novelty of a poetical excursion into 
the arduous fields of human physiology, where few 
flowers are supposed to bloom. The poetical form, how- 
ever, may fairly claim this advantage in justification of 
its adoption, that it allows a more fervid expression of 
those feelings of devout awe and amazement w^hich the 
study of the wonders of the human economy is so well 
fitted to excite. 

I offer no apology for mixing up my Religion with 
my Science ; and make no concealment of the fact, but 
glory in avowing it, that these are Christian, both one 
and the other. Nor do I regard it as a just matter of 
reproach that I make my creed so dominant and posi- 
tive. Believing firmly that the Christ that redeemed 



lo ADDRESS, 

me is the God that made me; not knowing nor desiring 
to know any other God but Him, I am accustomed to 
make Him an essential part of all knowledge, dis- 
cover Him in every discovery of Science, and count all 
truth dead until He vitalizes it. Any Science of Life, 
which is not based on the recognition of the fact that 
"in Him we live and move and have our being," I 
reckon essentially defective. 

A Physiology which has to do with decomposing 
corpses, rather than living men and women; that puts 
these into retorts and distils them; or peeps and peers 
at the minutest shreds and specks of dead tissue 
through a microscope, and determines a cell to be the 
ultimate fact of structure, however true, has no right, 
I conceive, to be supercilious towards those, who, with- 
out rejecting what is thus discovered, find room for 
other things, things that pertain to the spiritual side 
of humanity, the indubitable facts of consciousness, a 
soul that soars and delights in freedom, and is not so 
in love with smallness, as willingly to be cooped up 
forever into so minute and microscopic a circle, cor- 
responding to a cypher, the symbol of nothingness, to 



ADDRESS. 1 1 

which indeed it closely approximates. So that if it 
comes to pishing and poohing, others, for aught we 
can see, have as good a right to pish and pooh as those 
who anogate so much; the Sadducees of science, who 
believe in neither angel nor spirit, and are able to find 
nowhere anything worthy of worship ; in this respect, 
showing themselves to be more heathenish than the 
heathen. 

The great Galen, albeit an unbaptized pagan, who 
lived and wrote in the second century, after reviewing 
the structure of the hand and foot, and their adapta- 
tion to their respective functions, treats us to the fol- 
lowing eloquent outburst of pious feeling, breathing a 
spirit not unworthy of Christianity itself: " I esteem 
myself as composing a solemn hymn to the Author of 
our bodily frame, and in this I think there is more true 
piety than in sacrificing to Him hecatombs of oxen, or 
burnt offerings of the most costly perfumes, for I first 
endeavor to know Him myself, and afterwards to show 
Him to others, to inform them how great is His wisdom, 
His virtue. His goodness." 

This noble utterance, so honorable to the head and 



12 ADDRESS. 

heart of one, who, for 1400 years, ruled from his urn in 
the great schools of medicine throughout the civilized 
world with an authority so absolute, that it was 
reckoned a crime to question it in the smallest par- 
ticular — sets forth so truly the design I had in view in 
the following Poem, that I have chosen it as a motto, 
in connection with that other apothegm of Greek wis- 
dom, ''Know Thyself." I style my Poem, "The Micro- 
cosm," and in order that I may be more easily followed 
in the reading of it, I beg to premise an outline of its 
plan in the following 

ANALYSIS. 

The Poem begins with speaking of Man as the Arche- 
type or ideal exemplar of all animals, whose coming 
was foretold in a long series of Geologic prophecies 
from the creation of the paleozoic fishes ; and then 
passes to notice a remarkable anticipation of this 
accepted doctrine of modern science in the 139th Psalm 
— Owen, Agassiz and other great lights of Comparative 
and Philosophical Anatomy agreeing in this — that 
while man was the last made he was the first planned 



ADDRESS. 13 

of all animals — it being easy to trace even in the fins of 
the fish, a marked resemblance in structure to the bones 
composing the human arms of which they are homo- 
logues — fins, in other words, being imperfect arms, arms 
in their most rudimentary condition. 

In speaking of the supreme dignity of the human 
form, viewed as a whole, and of man existing m God as 
well as of God, occasion is taken to animadvert upon 
the atheistic tendency of certain materialistic teachings. 
After which the component parts of the Human Body 
are taken up in detail, beginning with — I. the Skin, as 
its outermost covering and face, (expressing the pas- 
sions, &c.,) composed of three layers. Below the Skin 
lie — II. the Muscles, the Organs of Motion, directed by 
the Will, acting through nervous channels of communi- 
cation with — III. the Brain, as the Common Sensory, 
and seat of this, and the other Faculties of the Mind, 
such as the Understanding, the Religious Sense, Mem- 
ory, Imagination and Conscience. A secretory function 
is attributed to the great Ganglions of the Brain (the 
Gray Substance) of a hypothetical Nervous Fluid 
which fills the whole body. 



14 ADDRESS. 

The Mind being dependent for its perceiving power 
on the Organs of the Senses, leads to a consideration 
of — IV. the Eye in its relation to Light, also to Tears 
and Sleep. After glancing at the analagous relations 
subsisting between the Soul and Truth, mention is 
made of the Founders of Asylums for the Blind; also 
of Asylums for the Deaf and Dumb. Next comes — V. 
the Ear in its relation to Sound and Music; and then 
by a natural transition — VI. the Human Voice, as being 
the most perfect of musical instruments. The Mouth 
and Nose, being concerned in Articulation, brings up — 
VII. Taste, and — VIII. Smell. The final cause of Taste 
being the repair of the Waste the body is constantly 
undergoing, there follows a description of— IX. Inges- 
tion, Digestion and Assimilation. The Chyle received 
into the Blood is conveyed to the right side of the 
Heart, which, besides being the grand Organ of — X. 
the Circulation and indirectly of Nutrition, is the 
reputed seat of — XI. the Affections, and stands in 
general speech as a synonym of Love under its mani- 
fold manifestations. 

Having noticed the coloring or modifying power of 



ADDRESS. ic 

the Viscera in giving Love its distinctive character, as 
exemplified in Maternal Love and the Love of the 
Sexes, occasion is taken to speak of — XIL Woman, as 
distinguished from Man. Of Charity, which is Love 
in action, or Love viewed in its practical aspect, an 
apt illustration is found in the devotion and self- 
denying labors of — XIII. the Conscientious Physician. 
Reference is made to — XIV. Christ as the Great 
Physician of Souls; and to — XV. Death in that as- 
pect of brightness which it bears to the believer. 



THE MICROCOSM 



TvgdOi (jeavrov. 



Geologic Prophecy of Majis Coming. 

OWHAT a solemn and divine delight 
To pierce the darkness of primeval night — 
Through countless generations upward climb 
To the first epochs of beginning time ; 
Back, through the solitude of ages gone, 
To the dim twilight of Creation's dawn ; 
To the dread genesis of heaven and earth, 
When pregnant Deity gave Nature birth ; 
Borne on swift pinions, till our feet we place 
Upon the undermost granitic base 
Of the round world ; and, awe-struck, standing there, 
Where all is lifeless, desolate and bare, 
2 



l8 THE MICROCOSM, 

Behold the forming of earth's upper crust, 
Built up of atoms of once living dust ; 
Layer on layer rising, rock on rock, 
Through lapse of years that numeration mock; 
Where lie, in stony sepulchres forgot. 
Gigantic organisms that now are not ; 
And all the various forms of life prevail, 
From low to high, in an ascending scale, — 
Mollusk and fish, then reptile, and then bird, 
So on to mammal, each o'er each interred — 
All pointing forward, in the eternal plan. 
To the ideal, archetypal MAN ! 

Scriptural Anticipation of the Doctrine. 

How oft, what's plain and patent in the Word 
Is by slow Science painfully inferred ! 
The truth she took long centuries to unfold, 
Had she but known it, was already told. 
See, with what ease the Psalmist now unlocks 
The secret of the paleozoic rocks ; 
Inspiring insight given him, to see 
The drift and meaning of the mystery; 
His, the discoveries of modern boast, 
By revelation of the Holy Ghost ; 



THE MICROCOSM, 19 

In correspondence, literally exact 
With geologic inference and fact, 
O'erwhelmed with fear and wonder, hear him speak :* 

'' O Omnipresent One ! in vain I seek 
To bound Thy being, get beyond Thee, go 
Where Thou, the Infinite, art not, — Oh, no ! 
If I ascend to heaven, I find Thee ; or in hell 
I make my bed, I find Thee there as well ; 
There is no hiding place from Thee ; yea, in the dark 
Thou seest me, nor need'st the sun — that spark 
Which the insufferable splendor of Thine eye 
Did kindle — to reveal me or descry ; 
Thou hast possessed my reins ; didst give me room, 
Growth and development in my mother's womb ; 
My substance was not hid from Thee, when I 
Was made in secret, and was curiously 
In the earth's lowest parts and strata wrought ; 
My perfect whole, was present to Thy thought 
While yet imperfect, and, in Nature's book 
My members were prefigured ; each thing took 
My embryonic likeness ; fish's fin. 
By virtue of relationship and kin, 

* Psalm cxxxix. 




APOLLO BELVEDERE. 
From the Original Statue. 



THE MICROCOSM. 21 

Proclaim thee ruler, destined to command. 

A little lower than the angels made, 

Dominion, glory, worship on thee laid, 

I praise not thee, but honor and applaud 

The handiwork and masterpiece of God. 

Fearful and w^onderful, and all divine, 

Where two worlds mingle, and two lives combine — 

A dual body, and a dual soul. 

Touching eternity at either pole — 

The tides of being, circling swift or slow, 

'Tvveen mystic banks that ever overflow, 

Exist not severed from the Fountain-head, 

But whence they rise, eternally are fed : 

Our springs are all in God; from Him we drink, 

Live, move, and have our being, feel and think. 

Christian Science. 

I value Science — none can prize it more — 
It gives ten thousand motives to adore. 
Be it religious, as it ought to be. 
The heart it humbles, and it bows the knee; 
What time it lays the breast of Nature bare, 
Discerns God's fingers working everywhere ; 
In the vast sweep of all embracing laws. 



22 THE MICROCOSM. 

Finds Him the real and the only Cause ; 
And, in the light of clearest evidence, 
Perceives Him acting in the present tense — 
Not as some claim, once acting but now not, 
The glorious product of His hands forgot, 
Having wound up the grand automaton, 
Leaving it, henceforth, to itself to run. 

Infidel Science. 

If I mistake not, 'tis in this consists 
The common folly of the specialists. 
Bigots of sense, they, with unwearied pains 
Searching for soul, find something they call brains; 
Happy the mystery of life to tell, 
By help of glasses, they announce a cell ; 
And thereupon they would the world persuade 
They know exactly how that man is made ; 
'Tween nought and nought, his origin and end, 
A cell is all, and all on this depend ; 
They pare his being, make it less and less, 
Until they reach the goal of nothingness. 
Their boasted methods failing to find out 
The soul's high essence, they affect to doubt ; 
To their own notions obstinately wed, 



THE MICROCOSM. 23 

They vainly seek the living 'mong the dead ; 
By learning mad, these noodles of the schools 
Are but a kind of higher class of fools. 

Who follows matter through its countless shapes, 
While still it vanishes and still escapes ; 
O'er eagerly pursues the flying feet 
Of natural causes farther than is meet, 
Losing all trace, and drawing thence too near, 
Into the bottomless obscure falls sheer ; 
With atheistic cant, then God ignores. 
And turns the Maker fairly out of doors ; 
Deems certainties of consciousness weigh less 
Than the presumptions of a learned guess. 

Conunon Sense. 

Presumptuous though it be, I, with a calm 
Audacity of faith, believe I am ; 
Nor venture with a Maker to dispense. 
But trust the sanities of Common Sense ; 
Hold life, despite of failure to extract, 
A thing of firm reality and fact ; 
Accept the truth, engraven on my heart, 
I have a spiritual and immortal part. 
If this great universe is a deceit, 




CO 

CO (O 



THE MICROCOSM. 25 

Each Tissue woven in the loom of God ! 
Compared with that magnificence of dress, 
Wherewith is clothed the Spirit's nakedness, 
O how contemptible and mean a thing, 
The purple and fine linen of a king ! 
The spotless vesture of the silky Skin, 
Outside of all, and covering all within, 
With what a marvellous and matchless grace. 
Is it disposed and moulded to each place ; 
Bounding and beautifying brow and breast, 
A crowning loveliness to all the rest ! 
Endowed with wondrous properties of soul 
That interpenetrate and fill the whole — 
A raiment, moral, maidenly and white, 
Shamed at each breach of decency and right, 
Where dwells a charm above the charms of sense. 
Suggestive of the soul's lost innocence. 

Pathognomy. 

Who has not seen that Feeling, born of flame,* 
Crimson the cheek at mention of a name ? 
The rapturous touch of some divine surprise 

♦ Aristotle calls I-ove, " Ti dep/zuv 7rpa}-/v«"— a certain fiery thing. 



26 THE MICROCOSM, 

Flash deep suffusion of celestial dyes ; 

When hands clasped hands, and lips to lips were pressed. 

And the heart's secret was at once confessed ? 

Lo, the young mother, when her infant first 
Gropes for the fountain whence to quench its thirst ; 
With outstretched tiny hands, to eager lips 
Conveys the nipple, and the nectar sips ; — 
As on her yearning breast, she feels the warm 
Delicious clasp of its embracing arm, 
How thrills the bosom, and how streams the wine ! 
How her frame trembles with a Joy divine ! 

Not Joy, not Love alone here take their rise, 
The chosen seat of mighty sympathies ; 
Electric with all life, Religious Awe 
Here holds its empire and asserts its law. 
At dead of night when deep sleep falls on men, 
Terror and trembling came upon me ; then 
A spirit passed before my face ; the hair 
Stood up upon my shuddering flesh — and there 
Was silence — all my bones did shake — 
A voice the preternatural stillness brake : 
"Shall mortal man, whose origin is dust, 
Arraign his Maker, claim to be more just ?" 

Contending Passions jostle and displace 



THE MICROCOSM. 27 

And tilt and tourney mostly in the Face ; 

Phantasmagoric shapes appear and pass, 

Distinctly pictured in that magic glass ; 

Their several natures, instantly imbued 

With the complexion of the changeful mood — 

Ashes of Grief, and pallor of Affright, 

Blackness of Rage, and Hatred's wicked white, 

The immortal radiance of Faith and Hope, 

Like that which streamed on Stephen's from the cope ; 

The hidden depths of being, stirred below. 

Thoughts, passions, feelings, upward mount for show ; 

Unmatched by Art, upon this wondrous scroll 

Portrayed are all the secrets of the Soul ; 

Upon this palimpsest, writ o'er and o'er, 

Each passing hour is busy penning more ; 

Events, that make the history within, 

There published on the surface of the Skin. 

Interior View — Skin Dissected. 

What lies below this beautiful outside? 
What proofs of power and wisdom does it hide ? 
To eyes instructed and divinely keen. 
The Shekinah, the Cherubim between. 
Was not more visible than the Godhead here, 



88 THE MICROCOSM. 

Nor spake more audibly to human ear. 
For from the centre to this far extreme, 
And corporal shore of being, Love supreme 
Its miracles magnificent has wrought, 
Embodying the Maker's perfect thought. 

Would you explore the Mysteries of Life ? 
Dissect in fear, use reverently the knife — 
All was made sacred to some holy use, 
Whate'er the profanations of abuse — 
Cut not with blundering and careless hand. 
If you the fleshly maze would understand ; 
For that the task is difficult, it needs 
The skill and knowledge which experience breeds. 

Blending of ConU-aries — St?'uctural Details. 

Now that the Dermal Covering is cut through, 
And its interior structure brought to view. 
Pause, if you will, and let your aided sight 
Peruse the wonders of Creative Might. 
Admire the skill that can in one combine 
A Sensibility and a Touch so fine — 
Making the Skin throughout the purpose serve 
Of one ubiquitous great surface nerve. 
That finest needle, would it entrance gain. 



THE MICROCOSM, 29 

Must pierce the sense and stab the soul with pain ; 

Where camping armies of papillae wait, 

Manning each fortress, guarding every gate. 

Armed at all points, and vigilant as fear. 

To sound th' alarm when danger hovers near — 

And yet, despite this nicety of sense. 

Formed for coarse uses, and for rough defense ; — 

An imbricated Armor, scale on scale * 

Twelve thousand millions form a coat of mail, 

Flexile and fine, or horny else and hard. 

The trembling nakedness of sense to guard ; 

A colored Rete delicately spun, 

Quenching the fiery arrows of the sun. 

Spreads soft above, and undulating dips 



*The Skin as here described includes: i. The CwifzV/^ with its innumerable 
microscopic tiles specially designed for defence. 2. The Rete Mucosum^ the seat of 
color. 3. The Corium or True Skin, consisting of two non-separable layers — the 
upper, papillary and sensitive ; the lower, firm and fibrous. 4. Perspiratory tubes ^ 
convoluted beneath the true skin, their spiral ducts opening obliquely under the 
scales of the Cuticle, their office being to purify and cool the body. 5. Sebaceous 
Follicles^ or Oil Glands^ seated in the substance of the skin, serving to soften and 
lubricate the surface, furnishing likewise, perhaps, 6, that Distinctive Odor pecu- 
liar to each individual whereby he sows himself on all the winds, and perfumes 
with every footstep the ground over which he passes. 7. The Hair^ implanted by 
a bulbous root in the fibrous layer of the Corium, which being contractile shrinks 
under the influence of great fear or horror, and as the poet says : 
" Makes each particular hair to stand on end 
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine" — 
quills in the porcupine, feathers in the bird, wool and hair in the quadruped, all 
belonging to the same category. Hair in man, not being needed for warmth or 
covering as in the lower lives, is gathered to the head and appropriately crowns it. 



30 THE MICROCOSM. 

Between the sentient papillary tips, 

Part of the duplex Corium beneath 

Forming a continent elastic sheath, 

Felted and firm and suitable to bind, 

Muscle andviscus to the place assigned ; 

Where, nine full leagues of Tubing buried lie — 

All convoluted opening to the sky, 

Transmitting formed impurities within, 

Through doors and windows of the porous skin, 

Th' exuding moisture tempering inward flame, 

Cooling the fever of the heated frame — 

Fountlets and Rivulets of Oil below. 

Preserving softness, ever spring and flow ; 

Musk emanations — to the dog defined, 

Snuffing his master on the scented wind — 

Hair, not for warmth or dress, here sparsely spread, 

Reserved to ornament the regal head. 

Around the brow of Eva thickly curled 

And crowning Adam monarch of the world. 

Voluntary Muscles — Their Office and Work. 

Lifting this threefold Veil, we find — beneath 
A dense, enclosing, universal sheath — * 

* The enveloping aponeurosis or fascia binding down the muscles. 







J TO 



CO 



rri 



P5 f^ 



THE MICROCOSM. 31 

The subject Muscles — * girded to fulfil 
The lightning mandates of the sovereign Will — 
Th' abounding means of motion, wherein lurk 
Man's infinite capacity for work ; 
By which, as taste or restless nature bids, 
He rears the Parthenon or Pyramids ; 
In high achievements of the plastic art, 
Fulfils th' ambitious purpose of his heart ; 
Creates a grace outrivaling his own, 
Charming all eyes — the poetry of stone ; 
Symbols his faith, as in Cathedrals — vast 
Religious petrifactions of the Past : 
Covers the land with cities ; makes all seas 
White with the sails of countless argosies ; 
Pushes the ocean back with all her waves. 
And from her haughty sway a kingdom saves ; 
Tunnels high mountains, Erebus unbars, 
And through it rolls the thunder of his cars ; 
With stalwart arm, defends down-trodden right. 



* Some authors reckon the number of Muscles in the Human Body as high as 
527. They have been divided into Voluntary (forming the red fiesh, or the main 
bulk of the body); Invo/uniary, such as the heart, fleshy fibres of the stomach, 
etc. ; and Mixed^ such as the muscles of respiration, etc. Each Muscle is made up 
of an indefinite number of fibres, which may be considered as so many muscles in 
miniature, along which stream the currents of the Will. Yet with all this complex 
apparatus everything is in harmony. 



32 THE MICROCOSM. 

And, like a whirlwind, sweeps the field of fight ; 
And when, at last, the war is made to cease. 
On firm foundations stablishes a peace ; 
Then barren wastes with nodding harvests sows, 
And makes the desert blossom as the rose. 

Muscular Dynamics — Directing Power Where ? 

Bundles of fleshy fibres without end. 
Along the bony Skeleton extend 
In thousand-fold directions from fixed points 
To act their several parts upon the Joints ; 
Adjustments nice of means to ends we trace. 
With each dynamic filament in place ; 
But Where's the Hand that grasps the million reins 
Directs and guides them, quickens or restrains ? 

See the musician, at his fingers' call, 
All sweet sounds scatter, fast as rain-drops fall ; 
With fiying touch, he weaves the web of song. 
Rhythmic as rapid, intricate as long. 
Whence this precision, delicacy and ease ? 
And where's the Master that defines the keys ? 

The many-jointed Spine, with link and lock 
To make it flexile while secure from shock, 
Is pierced throughout, in order to contain 



THE MICROCOSM. 35 

The downward prolongation of the brain ; 
From which, by double roots, the Nerves* arise — 
One Feeling gives, one Motive Power supplies ; 
In opposite directions, side by side, 
With mighty swiftness there two currents glide — 
Winged, head and heel, the Mercuries of Sense f 
Mount to the regions of Intelligence ; 
Instant as light, the nuncios of the throne 
Command the Muscles that command the Bone. 
Each morning after slumber, brave and fresh, 
The Moving Army of the Crimson Flesh, 
From fields of former conquests, marching comes 
To the grand beating of unnumbered drums — \ 
Each martial Fibre pushing to the van 
To make *' I will " the equal of " I can"; 

* For the benefit of the general reader, presumably not familiar with anatomi- 
cal details, we may state that there are 43 pairs of nerves in all, i.e. 12 Cranial or 
Encephalic and 31 Spinal. The first have only one root in the brain, whilst the 
latter arise by two roots from the anterior and posterior halves of the spinal mar- 
row, but unite immediately afterwards to form one nerve. Division of the ante- 
rior root causes loss of motion — of the posterior the loss of sensation. The first 
transmit volitionsyV£>wz the brain, the latter sensitive impressions to the brain. 

t Helmholtz has instituted experiments to determine the rapidity of transmis- 
sion of the nervous actions. For sensation the rate of movement assigned is one 
hundred and eighty to three hundred feet per second. Muscular contraction, or 
shortening of the muscular fibre takes place, at times, with extreme velocity ; a 
single thrill, in the letter R., can be pronounced in the i-3o,oooth part of a minute. 
There are insects whose wings strike the air thousands of times in a minute. The 
/orce of contraction {Myodynamis) is most remarkable in some of these. In birds, 
the absolute power in proportion to the weight of the body is as 10,000 to i. 

% The heart and arteries. 

3 



34 THE MICROCOSM. 

Testing the possibilities ot power 
In deeds of daring suited to the hour ; 
Doing its utmost to build up the health 
And glory of the inner Commonwealth. 
Levers and fulcra everywhere we find, 
But Where's the great Archimedean Mind, 
That on some pou sto,* outside and above, 
Plants its firm foot this living world to move ? 

Craniiun — Soul 's Firynament — Brai?i. 

Find it we shall, if anywhere we can, 
Doubtless, in that high Capitol of man. 
Whose Spheric Walls, concentric to the cope, 
Were built to match the nature of his Hope. 
What seems the low vault of a narrow tomb, 
Is the Soul's sky, where it has ample room ; 
As apt through this, its crystalline, to pass, 
As though it were diaphanous as glass. 
When Sense is dark, it is not dark, but light, 
Itself a sun, that banishes the night. 
Shedding a morning, beauteous to see, 
On the horizon of Eternity. 

* Archimedes used to say, '' Give a place where I may stand ((5of ttov (TTu), 
and I can move the world." 



THE MICROCOSM. 35 

Strange, a frail link and manacle of Brain 

So long below suffices to detain 

A principle, so radiant and high. 

So restless, strong, and fitted for the sky. 

Mind's Organ — City of the Dead. 

Here mounted, standing on the topmost towers, 
Up to the roof of this high dome of ours. 
With the Mind's Organ in our hands, what new 
Secrets of structure strike th' astonished view? 
A weird and wonderful, and fragile mass 
Of white and gray * — deserted now, alas ! 
All knowledge quite razed out ; no trace 
Of things which were ; now mourns each happy place, 



*The Nervous System everywhere consists of two kinds of tissue — White and 
Gray. The White forms the 7ierz'es^ the exterior of the spinal cord, and the cetztral 
parts of the brain and cerebellum (where it is soft, like curdled cream, but is 
firmer in the nerves), composed everywhere of parallel fibres or threads of extreme 
fineness, which form the Channels of nervous power and influence to and from 
the Ganglionic Centres— Sources, both great and small, of this influence. These 
constitute the Gray substance found in the ce?itra^ pa.rts of the spinal cord, at the 
l>ase of the brain in isolated masses, and the exterior of the cerebrum and cerebel- 
lum, where to economize space it lies in folds, dipping down into the interior, and 
forming the convolutions. It is found also in the ganglia of the Great Sympa- 
thetic. Condensely stated, the gray ganglia originate nervous power, the white 
ner\'ous filaments only transmit it. The Hemispherical Ganglia (the plaited or 
convoluted cortex of the cerebrum forming about nine-tenths of the whole mass 
of the brain), although entirely destitute of both sensibility and excitability, are 
believed to be on good grounds the special seat, so far as these can be said to have 
any, of the intellectual faculties — memory, reason, judgment and the like. Im- 
pressions, conveyed to the Spinal Cord, /. e. its ganglionic centre, are there organ- 



36 THE MICROCOSM. 

Where frolicked once the Children of the Mind, 

Of all the number, not one left behind ; 

No vestige of the battle and the strife ; 

None, of the conquests that ennobled life. 

Hid is the maze where Doubt was wont to grope ; 

Hid the starved fibre of a perished Hope ; 

Hid the tough sinews of a wrestling Faith, 

The Christian Athlete matched with Sin and Death ; 

Hid all the teeth-prints of the wolves of Grief, 

A savage pack, of which Remorse is chief. 

How strange, of all the wounds our comforts mar. 

That o»f the fellest we should find no scar ! 

None can point out where Understanding dwelt ; 
None, the high places where Religion knelt — 
The spot where Reverence, with feet unshod. 
Came to consult the Oracle of God. 

The crypts and catacombs, where Memory cast 
The bones of all the dead of all the Past ; 



ically, not intellectually perceived, and the movements which follow are such as 
are dictated by supreme organic wisdom, forming indeed an admirable ininticry 
of conscious sensation and voluntary action, but mimicry only, for both are really 
absent. This belongs to what is called "reflex action," and explains automatic 
function and phenomena, of which life is full. It is not, it is believed, until im- 
pressions have reached the ganglion of the Tuber Annulare that they are con- 
verted into conscious sensations and excite volttntary movements. And only when 
they have mounted to the Hemispheres, the ganglia of thought and feeling, that 
they become the property of the intellect and are made the grounds of rational 
conduct. 



THE MICROCOSM. 37 

Shelves, where were stowed all libraries of man, 

All gray traditions, since the world began ; 

All literatures, religions, kinds and parts 

Of knowledge, laws, philosophies and arts ; 

All actions, all articulated breath — 

The Book of Life, and, ah ! the Book of Death, — 

Wherein, whatever fatal leaf it turned. 

Its former self the guilty soul discerned. 

Mirrored entire — seen outside and within 

In every form and attitude of sin ; 

Th' inevitable reflection, imaged there, 

True to the life, like pictures of Daguerre ; 

The very scene, in which each deed was done, 

Painted in all the colors of the sun ; 

So faithful, fresh, time, circumstance and act, 

The past reality seemed present fact — 

There field, and weapon, and the riven brain 

Of Abel smitten by the hand of Cain, 

And blood, with red moist lips, in Pity's ears 

Crying for vengeance through eternal years, 

Th' unwashed crimson of the guilty sod 

As in the eye and memory of God. 

Imagination's skyey seat, where came 
For soaring flight the demigods of fame, 



38 THE MICROCOSM. 

Home of the Muses, fair and forked Mount 
Of high Parnassus, and Castalian Fount, 
Whence issued streams that watered all the earth, 
Then most, when blind Moeonides had birth ; 
And Zion's holier Hill, and Siloe's Brook, 
Warbling forever, in blind Milton's book ; 
The topmost peak where Shakespeare took his stand,, 
And waved his wand of power o'er sea and land. 
Strange, that so sweet and heavenly a hill, 
Should breed fierce dragons, ravenous beasts of ill — 
*' Gorgons and hydras, and chimeras dire,' 
Monsters of hideous shapes, with tongues of fire — 
Have rifted rocks whose entrance leads to hell, 
And the damned wizard of the mighty spell. 
Making its precincts all enchanted ground. 
Turning to horror every sight and sound. 
With grisly terrors, straight from Acheron, 
Peopling each nook, and darkening all the sun. 

None can the judgment seat of Conscience show^ 
That highest Court and Parliament below. 
Where, sole and sovereign, seated on her throne, 
She recognized th' Infallible alone. 
To her, the keys of heaven and earth were given. 
And what she bound on earth was bound in heaven. 



THE MICROCOSM. 39 

By the clear light, which her decisions shed, 
Instructed feet in pleasant ways were led. 
Martyrs were pointed to the neighboring sky, 
And Patriots taught how sweet it is to die. 

Where these had their high dwelling, we, in vain, 
Seek in this packed and folded pulp of brain. 
Judged, by the ignorant regards of sense. 
How mean ! by heights of function, how immense ! 
To reason and the vision of shut eyes 
Its infinite expandings fill the skies. 
What regions of sublimity once there ! 
What mountains soaring in the upper air ! 
Not thunder scarred Acroceraunian* peak, 
Alpine or Himalayan loftier than the Greek, 
So high so hidden — from whose secret tops. 
Keener than needles, trickled the first drops 
Of rising rivers, flowing silently 
Into the cerebral deep drainless sea. 
From which, as from a mighty fountain-head, 
Life's crystal waters everywhere were spread, 



* A range of very high mountains in Greece (from uKpo^, exlrcmo, and 
Kepavvoc, thunderbolt), so called because their peaks are often struck by light- 
ning. 



40 THE MICROCOSM. 

Coursing in liquid lapse through Channels White,* 
Swift as the lightning, stainless as the light, 
Conveying to each atom of the whole 
Volitions, animations, power and soul. 

Once beautiful for situation, gem 
And joy of the whole earth, Jerusalem, 
How sits she solitary ! she that was great 
Among the nations, now left desolate ! 
Th' adversary hath spread out his hand 
On all her pleasant things and spoiled the land ; 
Her gates are sunk into the ground ; the rent 
And ruined rampart and the wall lament ; 
Her palaces are swallowed up ; the Lord 
His altar hath cast off ; He hath abhorred 
His sanctuary even ; hath o'erthrown 
And pitied not, nor cared to spare His own. 

* The Nerves are composed of bundles of minute fibres or filaments, averaging* 
1-2,000 of an inch in diameter. Each filament consists of a colorless, transparent, 
tubular membrane, containing a thick, softish, semi-fluid nervous matter which is 
ivhite and glistening by reflected light. Running through the central part is a 
longitudinal grayish band, called " the axis of the cylinder." Branches of a nerve 
are merely separations and new directions of some of the filaments of the bundle, 
these being always continuous from their origin to their point of distribution, 
which prevents any confusion arising from a running together of impressions. 
The nervous tree, like that of the blood vessels, is so vast, that in its totality, 
exhibited separately, it would give almost an outline of the human form. The 
circulation of a nervous fluid, though not demonstrable, has been hypothetically 
deduced from the tubular structure of the nerves and other considerations. 
Assuming the fact, the whole body may be said to swim in this vital sea, having 
its analogy in that higher or divine animation, described as being " filled with the 
Spirit." 



THK MICROCOSM. 41 

The Eyc\ and its Correlative. 

The ways of Zion mourn ; funereal gloom 
Pills every habitation like a tomb ; 
Closed is each port, and window of the mind ; 
And there is none to look — the Eye is blind. 
How different once, when in that little Sphere 
The glorious universe was pictured clear ! 
O what an Organ that ! germane to Light, 
Whose own relations too are such to sight, 
T'were hard to say, the two so nicely fit. 
Made was the eye for light, or light for it. 
Ne'er were two lovers, separate by space. 
More eager, fond, impatient to embrace. 
Than that sweet splendor — streaming from afar, 
Traveling for ages from some distant star, 
Straight as an arrow speeding from the bow — 
And that dear Eyeball waiting here below. 

Light has no Manifesti?ig Power without the Eye. 

Prime work of God ! upon the bended knee 
The whole creation homage pays to thee ; 
From night and chaos countless suns emerge 
That all their beamings may in thee converge, 



42 THE MICROCOSM, 

Since wholly vain and useless were, they know, 

Without the Eye to see, their light to show ; 

They roll in darkness, quenched their every ray^ 

Till thy lids opening change the night to day. 

Placed, for commanding and enjoying these, 

In the dread centre of immensities. 

The depths thou searchest and the heights supreme^ 

Ranging at will from this to that extreme. 

Where space is dark to thy unaided sight. 

Thither thou turn'st thy telescope of might. 

And in the heart of the abysmal gloom 

Behold'st celestial gardens all abloom — 

Brave starry blossomings and clusters fine 

Loading the branches of the heavenly vine ; 

See'st suns, like dust, lie scattered 'long the road 

That leads to that far Paradise of God. 

From this to yonder, who the leagues can tell ? 

One might compute the ocean's drops as well. 

Turn now ! the nether infinite explore ! 

Extend thy vision as thou did'st before !* 

Pierce downwards, pierce to the concealed minute,^ 

The ultimates of things, the germ, the root, 

* For example, with a Microscope that magnifies a million times. 



THE MICROCOSM. 43 

The atom world, — so near and yet so far 

Not more remote is the remotest star — 

To forms of hfe to which, O can it be? 

A drop of water is a shoreless sea ! 

So vast thy sweep, it surely were not strange 

If eye angelic had no wider range. 

Even so ! On earth or in the realms of air 

Nothing is fair but as thou mak'st it fair — 

In face or flower or iris braided rain, 

Beauty exists not or exists in vain ; 

Without thy power to paint them or perceive 

There were no gorgeous shows of morn and eve. 

Light lost ill the Eye reappears in the Consciousness. 

Ho\v wonderful, that organs made of clay 

Should drink so long th' abundance of the day ! 

Receive the constant unreturning tides 

Of sun and moon and all the stars besides ! 

Not lost is all this mighty wealth of beams — 

Rivers of light, innumerable streams, 

Flow darkling for a space, then spring again 

To join the Arethusas * of the brain, 

* The river Alpheus in Elis is fabled to flow under the earth to Sicily and to 
unite with the fountain Arethusa ; hence Arethusa, a nymph, whose lover was- 
Alpheus. 



44 THE MICROCOSM. 

In bliss of married consciousness to be 
Fountains of brightness through eternity. 

Tears — Sleep, its Resuscitating Power — Organic Life. 

Since man was born to trouble here below, 
Tears were provided for predestined woe ; 
And tears have fallen in perpetual shower 
From man's apostasy until this hour, 
But there's the promise of a future day 
When God's dear hand shall wipe all tears away. 

On eyes that watch as well as eyes that weep 
Descends the solemn mystery of Sleep, 
Toiling and climbing to the very close, 
The weary Body, longing for repose. 
On the gained level of the day's ascent, 
Halts for the night and pitches there its tent ; 
Then, sinking down, is 'gulfed in an abyss 
As deep and dark as the abodes of Dis.* 
Rather, returns into the peaceful gloom 
And blank unconsciousness of Nature's womb, 
Where plastic forces work, to be next morn 
To a new life and mightier vigor born — 

* Domos Ditis. 



THE MICROCOSM. 45 

Prepared to run again Life's upward way 

Scaling the misty summits of To-Day ; 

Lo ! height o'er height, through all the years, they rise, 

Supplying steps by which to mount the skies, 

Ladder, like Jacob's, heavenly, complete. 

Whose radiant rounds were for angelic feet. 

From night's dark caves spring evermore, in truth, 

Fountains of freshness and perpetual youth ; 

This seeming death, with consciousness at strife, 

Is health and happiness and length of life. 

There is within, that which preserves and keeps — 

Organic Providence that never sleeps • — 

When the slack hand of Reason drops the rein, 

This drives the chariots of the heart and brain. 

Were life's full goblet trusted to the Will, 

Its nerveless hand would soon its contents spill ; 

The Maker so was careful to provide 

Another principle and power beside, 

Archeus,* Instinct — any name may serve — 



* The Archaeus (from Gr. "pjeww, to rule ; apxVi beginning), according to Van 
Helmont, is an immaterial principle, existing from the beginning and presiding 
over the development of the body and over all organic phenomena. Besides this 
chief one, which he located in the upper orifice of the stomach, he admitted several 
subordinates, one for each organ, each of them being liable to anger, caprice, ter- 
ror, and every human feeling. 



46 THE MICROCOSM. 

Organic Life, Great Sympathetic Nerve,* 

With Cerebellum,! competent to save, 

And rescue from the clutches of the grave, — 

When Sleep would else have caused immediate death. 

Stopped the heart's action, and cut short the breath, 

Drying each source, that fed and kept alive 

Th' industrious bees in the organic hive. J 



* The Great Sympathetic lies in front and along the sides of the spine, and sup- 
plies the organs over which the will and consciousness have no immediate control, 
such as the intestines, liver, heart, etc. Its numerous ganglia (centres and origi- 
nators of nervous influence) are the knots of a nervous reticulation which connects 
not only the organs of Organic Life one with the other, but these also with the 
brain and spinal cord. It is due to this- -separately or conjointly with the spinal 
cord in its reflex or excito-motor capacity, derived from its own ganglionic axis or 
pith, giving it also independent and automatic powers, powers not sensibly de- 
pendent upon the consciousness or will for their exercise— that all the vital func- 
tions do not come to a stand-still in our first slumber. 

t The opinion, which attributes to Cerebellum the power of associating or co- 
ordinating the different voluntary movements, is the one now most generally re- 
ceived. Destroyed, the gubernatorial faculty is lost and the animal staggers and 
falls like a drunken man. In addition to this, it has been supposed that whatever 
the cerebrum does rationally and by fits, the cerebellum does unconsciously and 
permanently— so that in sleep, the motions of thought and will not being organi- 
cally but only consciously suspended, need to be maintained and kept up to their 
proper level, and that this is the office of the cerebellum, which like the chain and 
springs of a watch, not only regulate its movements, but prevent it from running 
suddenly down. 

X While an exaggerated importance may have been given to the doctrine of Cell 
Formation, the truth of it seems to be well established. The statement of Virchow 
that " Every animal presents itself as a sum of vital unities, every one of which 
manifests all the characteristics of life," although hypothetical, at least in part, is 
a convenient formula for explaining many vital phenomena observed both in 
health and disease. Receiving it, it certainly justifies the figure here used— the 
bee working with a blind instinct, being compared to that organic intelligence, 
which resident in each cell presides over the functions of nutrition, secretion and 
elimination. 



THE MICROCOSM. 47 

■ Spiritual A nalogics. 

As light to Eye, so to the Soal, in sooth, 
The Hght of God, the higher light of Truth. 
How, when man fell, his dark and hungry eyes 
Looked for the sunrise in the eastern skies ! 
Filled with all doubt, and wandering forlorn, 
Watching for signs of the delaying morn ! 
Ah ! should it never break, the stumbling feet 
Go stumbling onward to the Judgment Seat ; 
And toward the guilty, should there be no ruth 
In the just bosom of the God of Truth ; 
Those images of horror and affright. 
Projected on the canvas of the night, 
Should aye be present, wheresoe'er he turn. 
And God's fierce anger never cease to burn ! 
Ah! when the parting heavens some gleam let through, 
Some gleam of promise shining through the blue. 
Ah, more ! when that the Dayspring from on high 
Told that the Sun of Righteousness was nigh ; — 
Waving glad wings of many colored flame, 
Fore-running angels certified He came ; 
Then most of all, when following full soon, 
Upon his midnight burst eternal noon ; 



48 THE MICROCOSM. 

How to the heavenly host his pulses beat, 
Timed to the music of their marching feet ! 

Congenital Blindness — Awards of the Last Day^ 
Alas, for those, who, haply blind from birth, 

Have never seen the loveliness of earth ; 

To whose rapt gaze, the spectacle ne'er given 

Of all the dread magnificence of heaven ; 

One mighty blank, one universal black, 

The moving wonders of the Zodiac ; 

The constellations from their fixed abode. 

Shed no sweet influence on their darkling road : 

Their rolling eyeballs turn, and find no ray ; 

An unknown joy, the blessedness of day. 

Between the man, who, in his neighbor's grief, 

With swiftest pity, flies to his relief ; 

And him, whose cruel and unnatural part 

It is to plague and wring his brother's heart. 

How deep the gulf ! how different the award 

At the great final coming of the Lord ! 

In the Last Judgment, all the world shall hear 

The silent thunder prisoned in a tear — * 

* Faraday has shown by the most conclusive experiments that the electricity 
which decomposes, and that which is evolved by the decomposition of a certain 
quantity of matter are alike. A single drop of water therefore contains as much 
electricity as could be accumulated in 800,000 Leyden jars — a quantity equal to 
that which is developed from a charged thunder-cloud. 



THE MICROCOSM. 49 

The pent up wrath shall strike the tyrant there, 
Who would not pity, and who would not spare. 

Asylums for the Bliiid. 

Thou, who wert styled th' Apostle of the Blind, 
No bays too green, thine honored brows to bind, 
Who toiled and sacrificed beyond the sea — 
'Tis right to name thee, Valentin Haiiy !* 
To render happier a cheerless lot ; 
Enrich with knowledge those who have it not ; 
To pour nevy light into the darkened mind, 
And force an entrance where it none can find ; 
By novel methods, and ingenious tools. 
Imparting all the learning of the schools ; 
For loss of one, obtaining recompense 
In the perfection of another sense ; — 
Inspiring music, bringing heaven so near 
They almost think they see it, as they hear — 



* Louis IX., better known as St. Louis, in 1260 founded the Hospice des Quinze 
Vingts at Paris — designed, as its name implies, originally for 15 score or 300 per- 
sons — which still exists. This is believed to have been the first public provision 
ever made for the Blind. It was solely eleemosynary. No instruction was at- 
tempted. Although in the 16th century attempts were made to print for the 
Blind in intaglio and afterwards in relief, nothing material was accomplished, 
till 1784, when Valentin Haiiy, " the apostle of the blind" as the French named 
him, commenced his arduous, and self-denying labors, and laid the foundations of 
the modern system. His pupils became eminent as musicians or mathematicians. 

4 



50 THE MICROCOSM, 

Is like that work, in kind if not degree, 
Done Bartimeus, when Christ made him see. 

Asylums for the Deaf and Diunb. 

Not less their praise, nor less their high reward, 
Th' unequaled heroes of a task more hard. 
Enthusiasts, who labored to bridge o'er 
The gulf of silence, never passed before. 
To reach the solitaire, who lived apart,* 
Cut off from commerce with the human heart ; 
To whom had been, all goings on below, 
A ceremonious and unmeaning show ; 
Men met in council, on occasions proud. 
Nought but a mouthing and grimacing crowd ; 



•The possibility of teaching the Deaf and Dumb was never conceived by the an- 
cients. Useless to the State, their destruction in infancy was even connived at ; and 
they were classed legally with idiots and the insane. Plunged in a night of the 
profoundest ignorance, sitting apart in utter loneliness, their state was the saddest 
possible. Attempts to instruct them belong mostly to modern times. Three sys- 
tems have been adopted in different countries. i. That of Wallis, Pereira 
Heinicke and Braid wood, which falsely assumed that while signs may give vague 
ideas there can be no precision without words. Consequently the first years under 
this system were devoted almost wholly to learning articulation and reading on 
the lip. 2. That of abb^ De I'Epde as improved by Sicard and Bebian, which 
proceeds on the directly opposite theory that there is no idea which may not be 
expressed by signs without words. Sign lang^lage has the important advantage, 
besides many others that might be named, of being universal. 3. The American 
system,which is a further modification of De I'Epee's. The number of deaf-mutes 
who have distinguished themselves in science and art is already quite consider- 
able. My friend, Mr. John R. Burnet, farmer and author, living at Livingston, 
N. J., is one of the best informed men in the State. 



THE MICROCOSM, 5 1 

And all the great transactions of the time, 
An idle scene or puzzling pantomime. 
Children of silence ! deaf to every sound 
That trembles in the atmosphere around, 
Now far more happy — dancing ripples break 
Upon the marge of that once stagnant lake, 
Aye by fresh breezes overswept, and stirred 
With the vibrations of new thoughts conferred. 
No more your minds are heathenish and dumb, 
Now that the word of truth and grace has come ; 
Your silent praise, that penitential tear, 
Are quite articulate to your Saviour's ear. 

Hearing — Powers of Sound — Music of Nature. 

Within a bony labyrinthean cave. 
Reached by the pulse of the aerial wave, 
This sibyl, sweet, and mystic Sense is found. 
Muse, that presides o'er all the Powers of Sound. 
Viewless and numberless, these everywhere 
Wake to the finest tremble of the air ; 
Now from some mountain height are heard to call ; 
Now from the bottom of some waterfall; 
Now faint and far, now louder and more near, 
With varying cadence musical and clear ; 



52 THE MICROCOSM. 

Heard in the brooklet murmuring o'er the lea ; 

Heard in the roar of the resounding sea ; 

Heard in the thunder rolling through the sky ; 

Heard in the little insect chirping nigh ; 

The winds of winter wailing through the woods ; 

The mighty laughter of the vernal floods ; 

The rain-drops' showery dance and rhythmic beat, 

With twinkling of innumerable feet ; 

Pursuing echoes calling 'mong the rocks ; 

Lowing of herds, and bleating of the flocks ; 

The tender nightingale's melodious grief ; 

The sky-lark's warbled rapture of belief — 

Arrow of praise, direct from Nature's quiver, 

Sent duly up to the Almighty Giver. 

Music of Art — I?istrumental aiid Vocal, 

If once, ye Powers, with reeds, a rustic Pan, 
Ye tuned idyllic minstrelsies for man. 
These thin dilutions of the soul of song. 
Ye have abandoned, and abandoned long. 
Sweet as the spheral music of the skies. 
The thunder of your later harmonies. 
O fill the void capacious atmosphere 
With your full sum, and pour it in the ear ; 



THE MICROCOSM, 53 

Drown it with melody, nor let it wade 

Longer in shallows, of the deep afraid. 

Join to all instruments of wind and cords 

The poetry and excellence of words. 

If Country calls, put in the Trumpet's throat 

A loud and stirring and a warlike note ; 

And let there follow an inspiring blast, 

As the long file of heroes hurries past ; 

Then raise th' exultant clamor to its height, 

When crowned as victors, they return from fight. 

Because the service God demands of men 

Is not an intermittent thing of now and then, 

Temples of permanence we rightly raise. 

For the perpetual purposes of praise, 

And build great Organs, in whose tubes of sound, 

Sleeping or waking, ye are always found. 

Awake ! prepare Te Deums ! now awake ! 

Wave your great wings till all the building shake ! 

Rend the low roof, and rend the vault of heaven, 

Bearing the rapture of a soul forgiven ! 

Voice — Air of Expiration^ Its Transmutations. 

Wonderful instrument, but not so choice 
As is the Organ of the Human Voice. 



54 THE MICROCOSM, 

What compact proof of Heavenly Power and Skill, 

When simplest means sublimest ends fulfill ! 

That two-stringed Lyre — quick strung to every note. 

Placed at the windy entrance of the throat. 

With a divine economy of room, 

So placed it might the smallest space consume, 

There where the aerial currents come and go. 

To feed the vital fires that burn below, 

And with a quickening purifying force. 

The blood to freshen in its onward course — 

Taking the waste, effete and useless breath, 

Charged with the very element of death. 

Converts it into music, glorious shapes 

Of power and beauty, ere that breath escapes. 

A transformation marvelous and strange, 

Unequaled, in the Alchemy of change ; 

Harmonious forces working to condense 

The blazing jewels of intelligence ; 

Diamonds more rich than proudest monarchs wear, 

Formed from the gaseous carbon of the air ; 

Th' imperial currency of human wit. 

Image and superscription stamped on it. 

Coined from the atmosohere — th' exhaustless mine 

Of golden treasures magical and fine — 



THE MICROCOSM, 55 

Chief circulating medium of thought, 

And common mintage by which truth is bought, 

And wisdom in its infinite supply, 

Stored in th' invisible market of the sky ! 

Speech, Accountable Self-recording— Mathematical Problem. 

O Heart and Mouth, in strictest wedlock bound, 
Whence spring th' immortal births of soul and sound ! 
Winged for far flight, your moral offspring sweep 
The airy fields of the cerulean deep. 
Up to the awful place, where Judgment waits 
Within Eternity's tremendous gates. 

Philosophy itself may serve to teach, 
No power so fearful as the Power of Speech. 
The idle word, which nothing can recall. 
Breaks sacred silence thrilling through the All ; 
Yea, like a pebble dropped into the sea. 
Ripples the ocean of immensity ; 
An oath profane, the horror of a lie. 
The shuddering Ether bears beyond the sky : 
Sounding through height and depth, its way it takes 
To distant spheres, and endless echoes wakes ; 
After long ages, still can be inferred, 
The sense and nature of each uttered word. 



56 THE MICROCOSM. 

Declared in postured particles, because 
The dance of atoms is by rhythmic laws : 
For that another cannot be the same, 
God calls each atom by a differ*ent name ; 
Makes these an alphabet, by which to spell 
Each sentence spoken, and each syllable ; 
Beyond the power of parchment, or of pen. 
Expounding all the utterances of men.* 

Its Social Uses — The Word made Flesh. 

Most genial of the faculties is this. 
And most subservient to social bliss ; 
Fulfills the longing as no other can. 
When man would manifest himself to man ; 

* Mr. Charles Babbage — an English Mathematician of the first rank, formerly 
Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, the Chair of Newton, famous 
also as the inventor of a Calculating Machine, built at a cost to the English 
Government of $85,cxx), followed by another, involving a still heaver outlay — in a 
work styled "The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise," published in 1838, filled with 
much original and quaint speculation, expresses his faith in the startling doctrine 
that no word or action can ever be eliminated from the records of Nature, but 
that the air is a " vast library," in whose pages are forever written all that man 
has ever said or woman whispered, inasmuch as the aerial pulses which seemed to 
have died out completely might yet be demonstrated by human reason to exist. 
So of the ocean. A being possessed of unbounded powers of mathematical analysis 
might trace the results of any impulse on the fluid, or read back the history of the 
sea in its own billows. And so too, the solid frame of the earth may serve as a 
stereotyped record both of the transactions and the proceedings of its inhabitants; 
for not only the heavings of the greatest earthquakes, but the little local tremors 
which the stamp of a human foot may produce, may all be said to have left their 
memorials in the ground. Heaven and earth are therefore prepared to bear wit 
ness against the transgressor on the Day of Judgment. Terrible thoughts these, 
but what if thev are true ? 



THE MICROCOSM. 57 

The isolated soul shut up no more 

Walks freely forth as through an open door. 

Vainly in inarticulate dumb show, 
Had Nature strove to teach man here below ; 
When finding that intended to reveal, 
Served but the more His presence to conceal, 
God put aside the Vesture of the Skies, 
And walked and talked with men in Human Guise : 
Th' apocalyptic Word made Flesh, made thus 
Communicated Godhead— God With Us. 

A rticulation— Nose— Mouth—Smell— Taste. 

Behold how man, the polyglot, employs 
Th' uncompounded elemental noise ! 
Makes endless permutations, mixes breath 
For nice intonings of each shibboleth ! 
Up from the Throat, one little step, we reach 
The cunning moulds and matrices of speech ; 
Formless and void the vocal chaos flows, 
Shaped into Language by the Mouth and Nose ; 
Mellifluous modulations taking place, 
In scented caverns of the hollow face ; 
Sweet mobile Lips, Teeth, Palate, flavorous Tongue, 
Making intelligible the speaking Lung ; 



58 THE MICROCOSM. 

Aiders of Speech, but then the seats as well 
Of the two senses of the Taste and Smell. 

Smell— Odors, Their Subtlety and Imponderability. 

The Nerves of Smell, the first the brain to leave. 
Combed and divided through a bony sieve,* 
They, from their tresses of disheveled hair, 
Shake out the tangled fragrance of the air. 
Conversant with all sweetness — Nature brings 
Hither the soul and quintessence of things ; 
Airy solutions of the finer powers. 
Imponderable properties of flowers ; 
Th' aroma of all seasons and all times. 
Kingdoms of nature, continents and climes — 
Too subtle and too spiritual, I ween. 
These for analysis however keen. 
Daintiest of senses, daintily it feeds 
On thymy pastures of the sk3^ey meads, 
Drinks from etherial fountains, whence are quaffed 
Delicious lungfuUs at one mighty draught. 
Cheering the breast, and sweetening all the blood, 
Like some celestial minister of good. 

* The ethmoid bone (from n^jJ-o^, "a sieve," and etdoq, " form"). 



THE MICROCOSM. 59 

Breath of Life^ Natural and Spiritual. 

God breathed, O breath with heavenly sweetness rife ! 
Into man's nostrils first the breath of life. 
The blissful aura vivified the whole, 
And straightway man became a living soul. 
Then odorous Eden yet more odorous grew, 
As o'er its bowers, th' informing Spirit blew 
Another inner and diviner air, 
Moving within the proper atmosphere. 
That shook the leaves and made the tree-tops nod, 
A mystic wind immediately from God, — 
Rushing and mighty like the Holy Ghost 
Poured out upon the day of Pentecost, 
Still the same Spirit where it lists it blows, 
We know not whence it comes nor where it goes, 
But souls it quickened on Creation's morn, 
Now dead in sin to a new life are born : 
One inspiration of immortal breath 
Creates a life beneath the ribs of death. 

Theopneusty. 

O via sacra, O thrice blessed door. 
Once hallowed with Thy presence, hallow. Lord ! once 
more. 



6o THE MICROCOSM. 

Inbreathe Thyself, my Maker ! fill each cell 

Of my deep breast, and deign with me to dwell. 

Come, my Desire ! Thou theme of heavenly tongues, 

Fulfill the want and hunger of the lungs. 

Be Thou my breath, my laughter, my delight, 

My song by day, my murmured dream by night. 

When hope dilates, and love my bosom warms. 

Be these the product of Thy powerful charms. 

If grief convulses, be it grief for sin, 

Prompt every sigh and make me pure within ; 

Perfumed by Thee " make every breath a spice 

And each religious act a sacrifice." 

Taste — Elimination and Waste — N'othing Lost. 

We eat to live : the Gustatory Sense 
(The same as Smell, but with a difference) 
At the pleased portal of the hungry throat, 
From endless sources, neighboring and remote. 
Assembles relishes, and daily feeds 
On these to satisfy the body's needs. 
Each moment, lo ! we die and are reborn ; * 
The old becomes cadaverous and outworn ; 



*" Occasio enim prseceps est propter artis materiam, dico autem corpus, quod 
continue fluit et memento temporis transmutatur." — Galen. 



THE MICROCOSM, 6l 

Beyond the boundary of our every breath, 
Wide yawns the open sepulchre of death ; 
Parts of our living selves give up the ghost ; 
Corrupt, corrupting, use and function lost. 
Benignant Nature with victorious force 
Effects deliverance from the loathed corse 
And body of this death ; in ceaseless flow, 
Fun'ral processions of dead atoms go. 
Thronging life's ways and outward opening gates, 
All unattended, where no mourner waits. 
Because the quick have duties, let the dead 
Bury their dead, the Lord of life hath said. 
No fear that needful ministry or rite 
Shall then be wanting when they pass from sight ; 
Sown on the winds or swallowed of the waves 
They shall not fail of hospitable graves. 
Dear to terrestial and celestial powers. 
Through every moment of the flying hours. 
Earth, careful mother, to her bosom draws 
Each reverent particle subject to her laws ; 
Dust welcomes dust, and all the happy ground 
Rejoices that the lost again is found. 
Again it forms a portion of the mould 
To tread the circle it fulfilled of old. 



62 THE MICROCOSM. 

Again it ministers to the thirsty root, 
Mounts to the blossom and matures the fruit ; 
Eaten again, again it makes a part, 
Or of the thinking brain or feeling heart. 

Human Want and Divine Supply. 

Because we ne'er continue in one stay — 
Our flowing lives still wash their banks away ; 
This colliquation of unstable flesh, 
Invades the old and scarcely spares the fresh ; 
The new formed solid, even, oozes through, 
" Thaws and resolves itself into a dew ;" 
And all is flux, and out ten thousand doors 
Our manly strength perpetually pours — 
We Hunger and We Thirst, and all abroad 
We see spread out the mighty Feast of God. 
Abounding plenty equal to the waste 
With luscious adaptations to the taste ; 
Viands heaped up in such seductive guise, 
Forestalling pleasure looks with sparkling eyes 
The golden produce of the garnered fields, 
Whate'er the valley or the mountain yields. 
The juicy tops of Nature, not that found 
In the dark mineral lumpish underground. 



THE MICROCOSM. 63 

By intermediate vegetative toil, 

And much elaboration of the soil, 

Lifted in air and glowing in the sun. 

We pluck the fruit then when the work is done. 

In curious quest of every dainty known, 

We draw from every month and every zone. 

To pile our boards, the canvas is unfurled 

Of more than half the navies of the world. 

Art intervenes, and as the case requires. 

Concocts the crude with culinary fires ; 

Goes forth in nature to extend her range, 

And serve man's love of novelty and change, 

By findings of manipulative skill, 

Testings and tastings, mixings at her will 

Of all the kingdoms, flavorings of the same, 

And seasonings of vegetable flame. 

Imperious Wants ! obedient to whose call, 

Armies capitulate, dynasties fall: 

Howe'er the rulers of the earth combine, 

They may not blink the fact that man must dine. 

It might seem little and beneath God's care — 
A punctual ordering of man's common fare ; 
Unwarranted, extravagant, absurd. 
To think our Pater Nosters could be heard — 



64 THE MICROCOSM. 

Did we not know that round our every meal 
Suns wait and serve and mighty planets wheel. 

Lord's Prayer — Hodiernal Bread — Hygienic Wisdom, 

Father in heaven, hallowed be Thy name — 
'Tis on Thy fatherhood we build our claim — 
Stoop to our needs, we cannot else be fed, 
Give us this day, as erst, our daily bread. 
Preserve us from perversion and abuse, 
Turning Thy bounties from their proper use ; 
From gluttony and criminal excess, 
Making enough our rule, nor more nor less. 
Instruct us how to choose, lest that we sin 
Against the body's health, the powers within, 
Awful economies and sacred laws. 
Of half our miseries the dreadful cause. 
May we live innocent as at the first. 
Using safe beverages to quench our thirst, 
Our common drink be water from the well. 
Not brewed enchantments of the fires of hell, 
Not tasting unblest cups, by Thee unblest. 
But where Satanic benedictions rest. 
Cursing and killing, maddening tlie brain — 
Brief joy succeeded by eternal pain. 



THE MICROCOSM, 65 

Ingestion — Digestion — Assimilation, 

Be in our Mouths to sanctify our Food ; 
Begin the process changing it to Blood. 
We dare not call that common and unclean 
Which Thou hast cleansed — nor count that longer mean 
So honored by assimilations grand, 
And exaltations of Thine own right hand, 
As through the channels of the body rolled, 
Th' ingested Morsel comes to be ensouled. 
Wherefore be present, every step attend 
Of its miraculous progress to the end. 
During the perilous passage of the strait, 
O keep fast shut the Laryngeal Gate : 
Adown the Throat while that it gently glides, 
And in the Stomach's secret chamber hides. 
Be there to entertain th' expected guest, 
And to the welcome give a keener zest. 
Make the couch ready : and mid veiling gloom, 
And holy privacy as in a womb, 
Induct into the mysteries of the place . 
Rain down celestial influence and grace 
Upon the nascent neophyte ; prepare 
The lavers of regeneration ; where 
5 



66 THE MICROCOSM. 

By wondrous saturations* for a time, 

And fresh baptisms of the new-born Chyme 

A part all purified, from soil purged clear, 

Made meet and worthy of a higher sphere, 

Enters the veins and mingles with the blood ; 

The rest a stained probationary flood, 

Passing the Gate Pyloric waits awhile. 

Its transformation into purer Chyle. 

Prosper and bless and let the work proceed. 

Each faithful function equal to the need ; 

Teach the strict Lacteals, duly this to guide 

Into the narrow way from out the wide. 

Where freed from feculence all white and clean, 

And trained, through mazes of the Glands between, 

For saintly fellowship and spousals sweet 

With the dear Lymph, as they together meet 

Within the Duct Thoracic, mount to gain 

The level of the pierced Subclavian Vein — 

Tempering the mass, to form a fluid part 

Of that humanity which fills the Heart. 



* The Gastric Juice, like the saliva, is not secreted in considerable quantity (Dr. 
Beaumont says not at all) except under the stimulus of recently ingested food. It 
is estimated that the average total quantity secreted in a man of medium size in 24 
hours is 14 pounds, equal to nearly two gallons. This quantity would be altogether 
incredible, were it not, that as soon as it has dissolved its quota of food, it is 
immediately re-absorbed and agains enters into the circulation, together with the 
alimentary substances which it holds in solution. — Dalto7i. 



THE MICROCOSM. 67 

Heart — Circulation — Nutrition — Blood Exhilarations. 

Make room, my Heart ! * that pour'st thyself abroad, 
Deep, central, awful mystery of God ! 
Lord of my bosom ! wonder of the breast ! 
"** Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest : " 
The young white blood, commingled with the old — 
Purple, impure, effete in part, and cold — 
Give needful furtherance through the Lungs, to where 
It meets the fiery spirits of the air — 
In friendly barter with the growing plants 
Exchanging what they need for what it wants ; 
For dingy carbon, refuse of the frame. 
Receiving back the principle of flame ; 
While mystic cerebrations downward pour 
The human flood to humanize yet more. 
Making it moral, with all passions rife, 
Instinct with mortal and immortal life ; 



* In the Fish, the Heart is a single organ, having- one Auricle and one Ventri- 
cle. In Reptiles, it has two Auricles placed side by side, and one Ventricle. In 
Quadrupeds and Man it is double, with two Auricles and two Ventricles ; and 
there are two distinct Circulations— the General or Systemic, and Pulmonary. 
The Clood on the Right Side of the Heart, whether found in the Veins or Arter- 
ies, IS dark or venous ; on the Left, it is ruddy and bright or arterial. The first 
belongs to the nocturnal side or hemisphere ; the latter to the diurnal— the sun 
having its rising in the capi'llaries of the lungs, and its setting in those of the 
general system — where the blood loses for the time its auroral bloom and splendor, 
and becomes dark, half devitalized and charged with deadly poison, until having 
completed its circuit, its pristine glitter and beauty are once more restored, as it 



68 THE MICROCOSM. 

Transfigured thus, thus raised and glorified, 

Complete the circle on the other side, 

Where Auricle and Ventricle with power 

Repeat their grasp five thousand times an hour ; 

Closing unresting hands that never tire 

On the one passionate object of desire ; 

And through each moment of the night and day 

A traveling joy to every part convey ; 

Filling each cell of all the Organs up. 

As wine is poured into a jeweled cup. 

With the Falernian of the grapes of Heaven, 

The living Blood miraculously given — 

Endued with plenteous power by which it can 

Rebuild the complex of the perfect man ; 

To every organ like to like impart, 

Distribute brain to brain and heart to heart ; 



reappears on the horizon of the lungs. The rapidity with which the Blood moves 
is very great. Even in Arteries of the minutest size it is so rapid that the glob 
ules cannot be distinguished in it on microscopic examination. It is slower in the 
Veins than in the Arteries, in the proportion of two to three, and still slower in 
the Capillaries. Volkman estimates the velocity in the arteries at 12 inches per 
second ; in veins at 8 inches; in capillaries, i-3oth of an inch. Experiments have 
been made to ascertain the time it takes the blood to pass the entire round of the 
circulation. Traces of a solution of Ferrocyanide of Potassium introduced into the 
right jugular vein of a horse appeared at the left in twenty to twenty-five sec- 
onds, but this is not decisive of the rate of the circulation, only of the diffusion. 
Results swarm with every heart-beat. Life's innumerable wheels, revolving all 
at once in every organ, make that beat representative of a life-time— a century of 
existence being no more than a calculable number of repetitions of that vital 
second. 



THE MICROCOSM. 69 

Conquer the years, the wastes of time repair ; 
Add to the body, make the fair more fair: 
Nor potent less to raise to loftiest heights 
Of sensuous pleasures and divine delights — 
Untied to fleshy ministrations — fraught 
With stimulant to Feeling and to Thought, 
Our Ganymede, enlivening with full bowl 
^' The feast of reason and the flow of soul." 

Heart — Seat of the Affections — Visceral Modifications. 

Undoubted Sovereign, worthiest to reign. 
Sharer of empire with the regal Brain ! 
(Like omnipresent in the realms of sense, 
Found at the centre and circumference, 
As if by multiplication, every part 
Possessed a sensory and beating heart) 
By virtue of thy birthright from above 
Thine all the high prerogatives of Love. 
One with thyself, Love's ample power display, 
Assert its right to universal sway ! 
As thou, so Love is many and yet one, 
Its royal robes of soul and body spun — 
Assorted vestments, filling many a room, 
The beauteous product of the living loom, 



70 THE MICROCOSM, 

By the deft fingers of the feelings wrought 
Plying the shuttle with the helping thought — 
The several organs, to their nature true, 
Giving each tunic its distinctive hue. 
One of the colors of refracted light, 
Or the chaste total of religious white — 
Defining Loves, all Family Loves that bind. 
The Love of Country, Love of Human Kind, 
The Love of God all other Loves above, 
The Love of Truth and Right, the Love of Love^ 

Within, what gracious sympathies appeal ! 
What visceral yearnings do not mothers feel ! — * 
The conscious vitals, full of fond alarms 
For the sweet infant folded in her arms. 
And melting tendernesses, that impart 
Tears to the eyes but laughter to the heart. 

Woman — Sex — Unity in Difference. 

O loving Woman, man's fulfillment sweet,. 
Completing him not otherwise complete ! 
How void and useless the sad remnant left 
Were he of her, his nobler part bereft ! 
Of her who bears the sacred name of Wife, 
The joy and crown and glory of his life, 




VENUS DE MEDICI 

BY 

Cleomenes, the Athenian. 
B. C 200—150. 



THE MICROCOSM. 71 

The Mother of his Children, whereby he 

Shall live in far off epochs yet to be. 

Conjoined but not confounded, side by side 

Lying so closely nothing can divide ; 

A dual self, a plural unit, twain. 

Except in sex, to be no more again ; 

Except in Sex — for sex can nought efface, 

Fixed as the granite mountain on its base — 

But not for this less one, away to take 

This sweet distinction were to mar not make. 

Dearer for difference in this respect. 

As means of rounding mutual defect. 

Woman and Man all social needs include ; 

Earth filled with men were still a solitude. 

In vain the birds would sing, in vain rejoice, 

Without the music of her sweeter voice. 

In vain the stars would shine, 'twere dark the while 

Without the light of her superior smile. 

To blot from earth's vocabularies one 

Of all her names were to blot out the sun. 

Love of the Sexes — E?ids Answered. 

O wondrous Hour, supremest hour of fate, 
When first the Soul discerns its proper Mate, 



72 THE MICROCOSM, 

By inward voices known as its elect — 

Distanced by love, and infinite respect, 

Fairer than fairest, shining from afar, 

Throned in the heights, a bright particular star 

The glory of the firmament, the evening sky 

Glad with the lustre of her beaming eye. 

Young Love, First Love, Love, haply, at First Sight, 

Smites likes the lightning, dazzles like the light ; 

Chance meeting eyes shoot forth contagious flame, 

Sending the hot blood wildly through the frame. 

By strange enchantment violently strook, 

The total being rushes with a look ; 

A beauty never seen before, except some gleams 

Purpling the atmosphere of blissful dreams, 

Wakens rare raptures and sensations new. 

Both soul and body thrilling through and through. 

Says sage Experience, sighing o'er the past, 
These dear illusions will not always last ; 
For beauty fades and disappointment clings 
To the reality of human things. 
It may be so — it may be, lover's sight 
, Surveying all things by love's purple light, 
Sees not the faults possession shall disclose. 



THE MICROCOSM. 73 

Nor the sharp thorn concealed beneath the rose. 

But if thus Nature her great ends attain 

The pomps of fancy dazzle not in vain. 

The pleasing falsehood of perfection flits, 

But not the Love, that in contentment sits 

Among the Dear Ones of its happy home, 

Blest Vv'ith sweet foretastes of the heaven to come. 

Deciduous charms of face unmissed depart, 

While bloom the fadeless beauties of the heart ; 

Inward conformity, and gradual growth 

Of moral likeness, tightening bonds of both, 

Perfect the marriage, which was but begun 

Upon that day they were pronounced one. 

True Love — Spurious Love. 

True Love is humble, thereby is it known, 
Girded for service, seeking not its own ; 
Exalts its object, timid homage pays. 
Vaunts not itself, but speaks in self-dispraise : 
**Look not on me ," it says, "for I am black, 
In thee all fullness is, in me all lack; 
But what I have and am are wholly thine. 
Vast were the grace would'st thou give thine for mine.' 



74 THE MICROCOSM. 

Let Love but enter, it converts the churl, 
And makes the miser lavish as an earl ; 
The strict walls of his prison, giving way, 
Fall outward and let in the light of day ; 
Released from base captivity to pelf. 
He upwards soars into a nobler self ; 
And hands, that once did nought but clutch and hoard 
Now emulate the bounty of the Lord ; 
Hold up a mirror, that reflects the face 
Of Him whose heart is love and man-ward grace. 

O how unlike to this, so chaste, refined. 
Magnanimous, benevolent and kind. 
Is that base thing, defiling and defiled, 
Born of unbridled lusts and passions wild. 
Which soon of all the virtues rings the knell 
And sends its subjects headlong down to hell ! 
The hidden canker of a vicious heart 
Spreads mortal sickness to the farthest part ; 
Th* infected body rots from day to day 
Till death contemptuous calls the soul away, 
To its own place its sentence to fulfill, 
''Let him that filthy is be filthy still." 




<q ^ 
PM O 

O) 

in 
^ I 



THE MICROCOSM. 75 

Charity— Physician— Opiferque per Orbem Dicor!^ 

O ye, devoted to the Healing Art, 
By solemn consecration, set apart 
To be the ministers of God above 
In the sublime Activities of Love ; 
Whose special function 'tis to give relief 
In the dark hours of suffering and of grief ; 
Between the living and the dead to stand 
Where fall the shafts of death on either hand ; 
Without one thought of flight, to still maintain 
Perpetual battle with the Powers of Pain ; 
With a fine arrow from a well bent bow 
Transfixing fatally the murd'rous foe ; 
And with an arm made powerful to save, 
Snatching the destined victims of the grave ; — 
The lofty nature of your office such. 
You cannot magnify the same too much, 
Which Tullyt even, eloquently lauds. 
As that which lifts man nearest to the gods. 

* This motto of the Medical Society of New Jersey is taken from the fable of 
Phoebus and Daphne in Ovid's Metamorphoses, Lib. I., v. 521-522. Phcebus is re- 
presented as saying : 

" Inventum medicina meum est ; opiferque per orbem 
Dicor^ et herbarum subjecta potentia nobis." 

Physic is my discovery ; and I 

Help-bearing [One] am called throughout the world, 

To us subjected is the power of herbs. 

t Nulla re homines ad deos propius accedunt quam salutem hominibus dando. — 
Cicero. 



76 THE MICROCOSM. 

Nosology — Auscultation of Heart and Lungs 

How many forms of sickness man befall, 
Sorrow and pain the common lot of all ! 
Science inquires, and, as its kinship finds, 
Makes classes, orders, families and kinds, 
Grouping and marshalling diseases so 
You can them better nominate and know. 
But no nosology did e'er include 
The total of the mighty multitude. 

Wise to interpret each prophetic sign, 
To pierce the veil and hidden fates divine, 
When parents ask, with grief and terror wild, 
*' Canst thou not save my darling, save my child ? " 
You skilled to catch, while listening to the breath, 
The distant footsteps of approaching death. 
May, in the sighing of the suffering lung 
And in its stillness, hear alike a tongue 
That syllables oracular reply : 
** Impossible, 'tis fixed, your child must die." 
Response more dread not Delphic prophetess 
E'er shuddered from her murmurous recess. 

With rush of countless chariots, palpitates 
Life's great metropolis through all her gates ; 




CO 



■-3 CO 

n 



THE MICROCOSM. 77 

Their crimson wheels with a perpetual sound, 

Coming and going in their endless round, 

Are heard tumultuous as they hurrying throng 

Th' Appian or Flaminian ways along : 

Tis yours to know next hour all this will fail, 

And death and silence everywhere prevail. 

Physicians Character and Aims — Science Progrescive, 

O it is well, that ye have hearts to feel, 
And ears not deaf to pity's soft appeal, 
Putting no difference 'twixt rich and poor. 
Plying with equal zeal the means of cure. 
Not deeming it becoming to regard 
Color or rank or person or reward. 
The man of impure life and sordid aims. 
He smuts his office and his calling shames ; 
Him you disown and place him under ban 
As nothing better than a charlatan. 
Believing needless ignorance a crime, 
You strive to reach the summit of your time ; 
To old age learning up from early youth 
Your life one long apprenticeship to truth. 
Wisely suspicious sometimes of the new. 
Ye give alert acceptance to the true : 



78 THE MICROCOSM. 

Even though it make old science obsolete, 
It with a thousand welcomes still you greet. 
" Knowledge is power," and here 'tis power to save, 
A power like God's to rescue from the grave. 
Each Year adds something — many things ye know 
Your sires knew not a Hundred Years ago. 
Art grown to more, your sons will higher climb, 
And make the Coming Centuries sublime ; 
Till Christ's Millennial Kingdom shall begin, 
And put an end to sickness and to sin. 
Heights of the Future ! breezy with the breath 
Of vernal quickening to the fields of Death, 
In the far distance of the long before, 
We think we see your misty summits soar ; 
Though scarce distinguished from the mingling skies, 
How glad the sight to our believing eyes ! 

Sph'itual Maladies — Christ the Great Physician. 

Ah ! there are maladies beyond your skill ; 
You cannot cure depravity of will ; 
You cannot mend a moral nature flawed. 
Convert a mind at enmity with God ; 
You cannot terminate the inward strife, 
Restore the broken harmonv of life ; 




A. E^ SELIGMAN 



HOTO. DR. E. ALBERT. 



Prof. Theodor Billroth, M. D. 
and Ms 
Clinical Assistants, Vienna 



THE M ICROCOSM. 79 

With all th' armentarium of Art 
Restrain the outflow of an evil heart ; 
Cleanse by detergent washings of the skin 
Th' immedicable leprosy of sin ; 
Remove the lunacy that chooses death, 
And imprecates destruction with each breath. 
When came the Great Physician of the Skies, 
To find a remedy that should suffice. 
Knowing 'twas not in mineral or wood, 
He sought it in a Pharmacy of Blood ; 
And since none other but His own was pure, 
He transfused that to consummate the cure. 
Man curing when past cure — content to give 
Himself to die to make His patient live. 

Death — Immortality. 

Death spreads, no more — a black and wrathful cloud 
The smiling infinite of heaven to shroud — 
A harmless mist, instead, divinely bright 
With dewy splendors of the morning light 
That scarcely serves th' eternal world to hide. 
Where loved ones gone before in bliss abide. 



WORKS 



OF 



ABRAHAM COLES, M.D., LL.D. 



REVIEWED BY 



EMINENT CRITICS 



WORKS OF ABRAHAM COLES. M.D., LLD. 



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for use as a text-book in Colleges and Theological Semi- 
naries. $1.25. 

ABRAHAM COLES. Biographical Sketch; Memorial 

Tributes; Selections from his Writings, 

Some hitherto unpublished, (including Two New Ver- 
sions, the Seventeenth and Eighteenth, of the "Dies 
Irae"); eight full-page illustrations; steel portrait of Dr. 
Coles, etc., etc. Edited by his son, Jonathan Acker- 
man Coles, A. M., M. D., 1892, pp. 350. $2.50. 

For sale by all booksellers; or sent, at our expense, to 
any address, on receipt of price mentioned. 

D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, New York. 



CRITICS AND CRITICISMS. 



CRITICS AND CRITICISMS. 

Richard Grant White (1821-1885), in ^'The Albion": 

"We commend the volume, 'Dies Irae, in Thirteen Original Ver- 
sions,' as one of great interest; and an admirable tribute from 
American scholarship and poetic taste to the supreme nobility of the 
original poem. Dr. Coles has shown a fine appreciation of the 
spirit and rhythmic movement of the Hymn, as well as unusual 
command of language and rhyme; and we much doubt whether any 
translation of the ' Dies Irsp,,' better than the first of the thirteen, will 
•ever be produced in English, except perhaps by himself. ... As to 
the translation of the Hymn, it is perhaps the most difficult task 
that could be undertaken. To render 'Faust' or the 'Songs of 
Egmont' into fitting English numbers, would be easy in com- 
parison." 

The Rev. Samuel Irenaeus Prime, D. D. (1812-1885), in 

the '' New York Observer ": 

"The book is a gem both typographically and intrinsically; beau- 
tifully printed at the * Riverside Press,' in the loveliest antique type, 
on tinted paper, with liberal margins, embellished with exquisite 
photographs of the great masterpieces of Christian art, and withal 
elegantly and solidly bound in Matthew's best style, a gentleman- 
like book, suggestive of Christmas and the centre-table; and its 
contents worthy of their dainty envelope, amply entitling it as well 
to a place on the shelves of the scholar The first two of the 



thirteen versions of the * Dies Irae ' appeared in the ' Newark Daily- 
Advertiser ' as long ago as 1847. They were extensively copied by 
the press, and warmly commended — particularly by the Rev. Drs. 
James W. Alexander and W. R. Williams, scholars whose critical 
acumen and literary ability are universally recognized — as being: 
the best of the English versions in double rhyme; and examples of 
singular success in a difficult undertaking, in which many, and of 
eminent name, had been competitors. The eleven other versions, 
are worthy companions of those which have received such eminent, 
endorsement. Indeed, we are not sure but that the last, which is^ 
in the same measure as Crashaw's, but in our judgment far superior,, 
will please the general taste most of all." 

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), in the New York 
« Evening Post": 

" There are few versions of the Hymn which will bear to be- 
compared with these; we are surprised that they are all so well 
done." 

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891), in ''The Atlantic 
Monthly": 

** Dr. Coles has made, we think, the most successful attempt at 

an English translation of the Hymn that we have ever seen 

He has done so well that we hope he will try his hand on some of 
the other Latin Hymns. By rendering them in their own metres, 
and with so large a transfusion of their spirit as characterizes his- 
present attempt, he will be doing a real service to the lovers of 
that kind of religious poetry in which neither the religion nor 
the poetry is left out. He has shown that he knows the worth 
of faithfulness." 



*' Christian (Quarterly) Review :" 

"Of Dr. Coles' remarkable success as respects these particulars 
<(namely, faithfulness and variety), no one competent to judge can 
doubt. . . . For all that enters into a good translation, fidelity to 
the sense of the original, uniform conformity to its tenses, preser- 
vation of its metrical form without awkwardly inverting, inele- 
gantly abbreviating, or violently straining the sense of the words, 
.and the reproduction of its vital spirit — for all these qualities Dr. 
"Coles' first translation stands, we believe, not only unsurpassed, 
Ibut unequalled in the English language." 

"The Boston Transcript" says: 

*' The ' Dies Irae' is by far the most interesting hymn to Protestants 
rand poets, of all that our fathers used to sing or hear in a strange 
tongue ' not understanded of the people;' and so thoroughly has the 
translator (Dr. Coles) entered the circle of the old song's heat and 
:Strength that he has been carried through it again and again, and 
here are more than a dozen versions of the same Latin words, and 
:an historical criticism in a strong, earnest and poetical style akin 
Xo that of the hymn itself." 

Lady Jane Franklin, wife of Sir John Franklin, when 

in this country, met Dr. Coles at the residence of a 

:inutual friend; similarity of tastes, and the interest 

taken by Dr. Coles in the search for her husband, 

ripened the acquaintanceship into that of friendship. 

prom her letter written from New York, October 22d, 

j86o, we quote the following : 

"* Dp.. Abraham Coles: 

" DEi^R Sir — I cannot deny myself the pleasure of thanking you 



once more for your most beautiful little book, 'The Dies Irse, in 
Thirteen Original Versions,' which I value not only for its intrinsic 
merit, but as an expression of your very kind feelings towards me». 
Believe me, gratefully and truly yours." 

William C. Prime, in the ''Journal of Commerce": 

"Dr. A. Coles has long been known to the literary world as 
specially successful in the translation of Latin Hymns. His render- 
ings of the ' Dies Irae' are familiar to many readers. He has now 
also prepared a book entitled 'Old Gems in New Settings,' an exquisite 
volume, in which we find the ' De Contemptu Mundi,' the ' Veni 
Sancte Spirilus, and other fine old favorites skillfully and grace- 
fully translated. The grand hymn or poem of Bernard de Clugny, 
of which the extracts in this book are styled * Urbs Ccelestis Syon,'' 
is rendered in a style very nearly resembling the original, and 
gives the reader, who does not understand Latin, an excellent idea 
of the peculiar characteristics of the hymn of Bernard. Besides 
these, we have the ' Stabat Mater,' with a complete history of the 
noble hymn, and a very fine translation. The lovers of old hymns- 
owe a special debt of gratitude to Dr. Coles for the good taste and 
the thorough appreciation and ability which he brings to the work 
of placing these glorious old songs within reach of the modern 
world. We could wish them to become favorites in every family, 
and they will so become in spite of their Latin origin." 

The Rev. Philip Schaff, D. D., LL. D., in "Hours at 

Home": 

"There are about eighty German translations of the ' Stabat 
Mater' and several English translations. But very few of the latter 
strictly preserve the original metre. The English double rhyme 
rarely expresses the melody and pathos of the Latin. Dr. Abraham 



Coles, the well-known author of fourteen translations of ' Dies Irae,* 
has probably best succeeded in a faithful rendering of the ' Mater 
Dolorosa.' * * * The admirable English version of the ' Mater 
Dolorosa/ which carefully preserves the measure of the original, 
is from Dr. Coles, who kindly granted us permission to use it." 

"The Republican," Springfield, Mass.: 

" Dr. Abraham Coles won fame, and sure fame, by the most 
poetic and truthful translations ever given of that great mediaeval 
hymn, the 'Dies Irae.'" 

George Ripley (1802-1880), in the "New York Tribune": 

" United with a rare command of language and facility of versi- 
fication, this is the secret of the eminent success with which the 
translator has reproduced the solemn litany of the Middle Ages in 
such a variety of forms. If not all of equal excellence, it is hard to 
decide as to their respective merits, so admirably do they embody 
the tone and sentiment of the original in vigorous and impressive 
verse. The essays which precede and follow the Hymn, exhibit the 
learning and the taste of the translator in a most favorable light, 
and show that an antiquary and a poet have not been lost in the 
study of science and the practice of a laborious profession. In 
addition to the thirteen versions of ' Dies Irae,' the volume contains 
translations of the ' Stabat Mater,' ' Urbs Coelestis Syon,' ' Veni 
Creator Spiritus,' and other choice mediaeval hymns which have 
been executed with equal unction and felicity. 

" We have also a poem by the same author, entitled ' The Micro- 
cosm,' read before the Medical Society of New Jersey at its centenary 
anniversary. It is an ingenious attempt to present the principles 
of the animal economy in a philosophical poem, somewhat after 
the manner of Lucretius, and combining scientific analysis with. 



religious sentiment. In ordinary hands, we should not regard this 
as a happy, nor a safe experiment, but the dexterity with which it 
has been managed by Dr. Coles, illustrates his versatile talent as 
well as the originality of his conceptions. 

The Rev. James McCosh, D. D., LL. D., President 

of the College of New Jersey, in a letter to Dr. Coles : 

"Princeton, N. J. 
"I have read with the liveliest delight your translations of the 
' Latin Hymns.' I wonder how you could have drawn out thirteen 
of the ' Dies Irae,' all in the spirit and manner of the original, and 
yet so different. I thought each the best as I read it. * * * * 
I have read enough of ' The Microcosm' to see that it is thoroughly- 
scientific." 

Richard Stockton Field, LL. D., (1803-1870), in 1838 
Attorney General of New Jersey; in 1862 United States 
Senator; in 1863 appointed by President Lincoln United 
States District Judge for the District of New Jersey; at 
the time of his death President of the New Jersey His- 
torical Society: 

" Princeton, N. J. 
*'Dr. Abraham Coles: 

"My Dear Sir — With the original 'Dies Irae' and 'Stabat 
Mater' I have long been familiar. They have always had a pecul- 
iar charm, I may say fascination, about them, and I have loved to 
repeat them. And now I have no hesitation in saying that they 
never have been, and I doubt if they ever will be, as well translated 
into English verse as they are in your volume. 

" Knowing the difficulty of the task, seeing how others have 



failed. I am indeed astonished at your success. With the strictest 
fidelity, your translations have all the tenderness, pathos and 
rhythm of the beautiful and touching originals. I speak more 
particularly of the first of the ' Dies Irae' and of the ' Stabat Mater.' 
The two first stanzas of the latter are perfect. 

"Your ' Microcosm,' too, is a noble poem. It has many strik- 
ingly beautiful passages. It evinces science and culture, and poet- 
ical talent of high order. You display great command of language, 
and great facility of versification. Your prose also is easy and 
graceful. I am glad of the opportunity afforded me of rendering 
this feeble tribute to their merits. Very truly yours." 

The '^ Newark Daily Advertiser :" 

" Dr. Coles has supplied a want and done a graceful work in 
"The Microcosm." What the flower or babbling stream is to Words- 
worth, that is the stranger, more complex, and more beautiful human 
frame to our author. In its organs, its powers, its aspirations, and 
its passions, he finds ample theme for song. . . Everywhere the 
rhythm is flowing and easy, and no scholarly man can peruse the 
work without a glance of wonder at the varied erudition, classical, 
poetical, and learned, that crowds its pages, and overflows in foot- 
notes. And through the whole is a devout religious tone and a 
purity of purpose worthy of all praise." 

Edmund C. Stedman: 

" Dr. Coles' researches, made so lovingly and conscientiously in 
his special field of poetical scholarship, have given him a distinct 
and most enviable position among American authors. We of the 
younger sort learn a lesson of reverent humility from the pure 
enthusiasm with which he approaches and handles his noble themes. 
The ' tone ' of all his works is perfect. He is so thoroughly in sym- 
pathy with his subjects that the lay reader instantly shares his 



feeling; and there is a kind of 'white light' pervading the whole-t. 
prose and verse — which at any time tranquilizes and purifies thft 
mind." 

The Rev. Robert Turnbull, D. D.: 

"I have finished the reading of ' The Microcosm,' which ha* 
afforded me unmingled delight. It is really a remarkable poem, 
and has passages of great beauty and power. It cannot fail to 
secure the admiration of all capable of appreciating it. Its ease, 
its exquisite finish, its vivid yet delicate and powerful imagery, an<1 
above all its sublime religious interest, entitle it to n very high plac* 
in our literature." 

John G. Whittier: 

" Dr. Abraham Coles is a born hymn writer. No man living oi 
dead has so rendered the text and the j/zVzV of th^ old and wonder, 
ful Latin Hymns. * * * His 'AH the Days ' and his ' Ever Witlv 
Thee' are immortal songs. It is better to have written them thar» 
the stateliest of epics. * * * jhe idea of 'The Microcosm' is 
novel and daring, but it is worked out with great skill and deli- 
cacy. * * * 'The Evangel' is a work of piet>' and beauty. The 
Proem opens with strong, vigorous yet melodious verse. I see no 
reason why the Divine Story may not be fitly told in poetry." 

Rev. S. I. Prime, D. D., in "The New York Observer": 

" 'The Evangel in Verse,' is the ripest fruit of the scholarship,. 
taste and poetic talent of one of our accomplished students of Eng- 
lish verse, whose translations of 'Dies Irae' and other poems have 
made the name of Dr. Coles familiar in the literature of our day. 
In the work before us he has attempted something higher and 
better than any former essay of his skillful pen. He has rendered 



the Gospel story of our Lord and Saviour into verse, with copious 
notes, giving the largest amount of knowledge from criiical 
authorities to justify and explain the readings and to illuminate the 
sacred narrative. . . . He excludes everything fictitious, and clings 
to the orthodox view of the character and mission of the God-man. 
The illustrations are a complete pictorial anthology. Thus the 
poet, critic, commentator and artist has made a volume that will 
take its place among the rare productions of the age, as an illustra- 
tion of the genius, taste, and fertile scholarship of the author." 



George Ripley, in the ''New York Tribune" : 

" The purpose of this volume, 'The Evangel,' would be usually 
regarded as beyond the scope of poetic composition. It aims to re- 
produce the scenes of the Gospel History in verse, with a strict ad- 
herence to the sacred narrative and no greater degree of imaginative 
coloring than would serve to present the facts in the most brilliant 
and impressive light. But the subject is one with which the author 
cherishes so profound a sympathy, as in some sense to justify the 
boldness of the attempt. The Oriental cast of his mind allures him 
to the haunts of sacred song, and produces a vital communion with 
the spirit of Hebrew poetry. Had he lived in the days of Isaiah or 
Jeremiah, he might have been one of the bards who sought inspira- 
tion 'at Siloa's brook that flowed fast by the oracle of God.' The 
present work is not the first fruits of his religious Muse, but he is 
already known to the lovers of mediaeval literature by his admir- 
able translations of the ' Dies Irae.' . . . The volume is brought out 
in a style of unusual elegance, as it respects the essential requisites 
of paper, print and binding, while the copious illustrations will at- 
tract notice by their selection of the most celebrated works of the 
best masters." 



The Rev. James McCosh, D. D., LL. D., upon the 
publication of " The Evangel : " 

''College of New Jersey, 

*' Princeton, N. J. 
"You are giving to the world further proof that we did ourselves 
honor in conferring upon you some years ago the honorary degree 
of LL. D. * * * * I spent several hours last Sabbath in read- 
ing your poem, and relished it very much." 

Daniel Haines (1801-1877), in 1843 elected Governor 
of New Jersey, and re-elected in 1847; Judge of the 
Supreme Court; one of the committee on the reunion 
of the two branches of the Presbyterian Church : 

*' Hamburg, N. J. 

•' My Dear Sir — I can scarcely find fitting words in which to 
express my sincere thanks for your kind remembrance of me in the 
presentation of the beautiful copy of your recent work, ' The 
Evangel in Verse.' From the introduction, the proem and a few 
chapters, I judge it to be a work of rare excellence. The metrical 
composition is pleasant to the ear and eye, and is remarkable for its 
literal meaning. To me the greater charm is its clear and forcible 
expressions of evangelical truth and sound Christian doctrine. 

" It is the most succinct and complete refutation of the doctrine 
of Darwin and Huxley that I have seen. 

"The Christian world owes you a debt of gratitude for your 
labor and research, and heartfelt thanks to God for giving you the 
ability to produce a book so full of instruction, and affording so 
much gratification to the cultivated mind." 

The Rev. George Dana Boardman, D. D.: 
" 'The Evangel in Verse ' is a feast to the eye and ear and heart. 



The careful exegesis, the conscientious loyalty to the statements of 
the Holy Story, the sympathetic reproduction of a remote and 
Oriental past, the sacred insight into the meaning of the Peerless 
Career, the homageful yet manly, unsuperstitious reverence, the 
rhythm as melodious as stately, the frequent notes, opulent in learn- 
ing and doctrine and devotion, the illustrations deftly culled from 
whatever is choice in ancient and modern art, these are some of 
the many excellencies which give to 'The Evangel in Verse' an im- 
mortal beauty and worth, adding it as another coronet for Him on 
whose brow are many diadems." 

The Rev. Charles Hodge, D. D., LL. D. (1797-1878): 

" I admire the skill which 'The Evangel' displays in investing 
with rainbow hues the simple narrations of the Gospels. All, how- 
ever, who have read Dr. Coles' versions of the " Dies Irae ' and other 
Latin Hymns must be prepared to receive any new productions 
from his pen with high expectations. In these days when even the 
clerical office seems in many cases insufficient to protect from the 
present fashionable form of scepticism, it is a great satisfaction to 
see a man of science and a scholar adhering so faithfully to the 
simple Gospel." 

The Hon. Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen : 

" United States Senate Chamber, 

"Washington, D. C. 
" My Dear Doctor — Many thanks to you for having written 
*The Evangel.' It is admirably conceived and executed. While 
the poem impresses the truth, it will lure many who would have 
remained uninformed to the valuable instruction contained in the 
Notes. The notes on Darwin, The Logos, Herod, and the miracle 
at Ajalon, are excellent. The poem brings out many scriptural 



truths, which are not on the surface. Let me say, it is a great thing 
to have written the book — to have your labor associated with sal- 
vation." 

The Rev. Robert Lowell, D.D., in the "Church Monthly": 

" Dr Coles is plainly a man of a very religious heart and a deeply 
reverential mind. . . . Moreover he has so much learning in his 
favorite subject, and so much critical instinct and experience, that 
those who can relish honest thinking, and tender and most skillful 
and true deductions, accept his teaching and suggestion with a ready 
—sometimes surprised — sympathy and confidence. Add to all this, 
that he has the sure taste of a poet, and the warm and loving earn- 
estness of a true believer in the redeeming Son of God, and the 
catholic spirit of one who knows with mind and heart that Christian- 
ity at its beginning was Christianity, and we have the man who can 
write such books as earnest Christian people will welcome and be 
thankful for. ... In this new book he proposes ' that " The Evangel " 
shall be a poetic version, and verse by verse paraphrase, so far as it 
goes, of the Four Gospels, anciently and properly regarded as one.' 
He makes an exquisite plea, in his preface, for giving leave to the 
glad words to rejoice at the Lord's coming in the Flesh, for which all 

other beings and things show their happiness In the notes 

the reader will find (if he have skill for such things) a treasure-house, 
in which everything is worthy of its place. Where he has offered 
new interpretations, or set forth at large interpretations not gener- 
ally received or familiar, he modestly asks only to have place given 
him, and gives every one free leave to differ. Everywhere there is 
the largest and most true-hearted charity. . . . The reader cannot 
open anywhere without finding in these notes, if he be not wiser or 
more learned than ourselves, a great deal that he never saw, or 
never saw so well set forth before." 



Stephen Alexander, LL. D., Professor of Mechanics 

and Astronomy in the College of New Jersey: 

" Princeton, N. J. 
"Abraham Coles, M. D., LL. D.: 

"My Dear Sir — 1 have delayed the acknowledgement of the 
receipt of your beautiful ' Evangel' until I could make some return 
after the same fashion. Please accept my sincere thanks, as well 
as my congratulations on your great success. I am always inter- 
ested in your books, and always learn something from them. 

"With this I send a copy of my ' Statement and Exposition of 
Certain Harmonies of the Solar System,' which 1 hope may reach 
you safely. Please accept the same, with my respects and regards. 
I think the Notes at the end and the supplement may especially 
interest you." 

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes : 

" There is a kind of straightforward simplicity about the poetical 
paraphrases which reminds one of the homelier but still always inter- 
esting verses which John Bunyan sprinkles like drops of heavenly 
dew along the pages of the Pilgrim's Progress, The illustrations 
add much to the work, in the way of ornanrent, and aid to the imag- 
ination. One among them is of terrible power, as it seems to me, 
such as it would be hard to show the equal of in the work of any 
modern artist. I mean Holman Hunt's ' Scapegoat.' There is a 
whole theology in that picture. It haunts me with its fearful sug- 
gestiveness like a nightmare. I find 'The Evangel' an impressive 
and charming book. It does not provoke criticism — it is too devout, 
too sincere, too thoroughly conscientious in its elaboration to allow 
of fault-finding or fault-hunting." 

William Cullen Bryant : 
* ' I have read ' The Evangel ' with pleasure and satisfaction. The 



versification of the Lord's Prayer is both an expansion of the sense 
and a commentary. The thought has often occurred to me what a 
world of meaning is there wrapped up, and that meaning is admira- 
bly brought out." 

Henry Woodhull Green, LL. D., (1802-1876), Chief 
Justice of the Supreme Court of New Jersey from 1846 
till i860, when he became Chancellor : 

"Trenton, N. J. 
"Abraham Coles, LL. D., Newark, N. J.: 

" My Dear Sir — I have read as much of ' The Evangel ' during 

the month since I received it as my leisure and the state of my 

health have permitted. Of its literary merits, I do not feel myself 

qualified to judge, but its perusal has given me great pleasure. I 

have been particularly impressed with the fidelity with which ycu 

have adhered to the sacred narrative, unmarred by the decorations 

of heathen mythology or papal fable. I regard that as no ordinary 

merit. I can well understand the strong temptation under which a 

man of high classic culture must, in a work of this kind, constantly 

labor, to turn from the stern simplicity of the sacred narrative to 

seek embellishment amid the flowers of classic fiction. To have 

resisted successfully such temptation, I regard as a very high merit; 

and I congratulate you on the production of a work, which, I cannot 

doubt, will redound to your own honor and the honor of our State. 

With high regard, I am, very respectfully yours." 

Charles H. Spurgeon, writing from Westwood, Beulah 
Hill, Upper Norwood, speaks of "The Evangel" as "a 
grand volume," and concludes his affectionate letter 
with the words : 

"Peace be to you, and every blessing. May Scotch Plains be a 



spot wherein Jesus dwells with a happy household. Yours very 
heartily." 

The Hon. William Earl Dodge, (1805-1883), merchant 
and philanthropist, in a letter, written from his resi- 
dence in New York City, to Dr. Coles : 

"Mrs. Dodge and myself have very much enjoyed 'The Evan- 
gel,' having carefully read it. Such perfect conformity to the text 
and spirit of the sacred narrative, so beautifully transferred to 
verse, we have seldom found." 

Thomas Gordon Hake, M. D., author of "Madeline, 
and Other Poems and Parables": 

" 12 Portland place, 
"West Kensington, W., London. 
"I have read 'The Evangel,' and 'The Light of the World,' 
with deep interest, and with assurance that the learning and intelli- 
gence displayed in executing so difficult a work will secure it a 
lasting place in our joint national literature." 

The ''New York Observer": 

"The skill of Dr. Coles as an artistic poet, his reverent, religious 
spirit, and the exalted flight of his muse in the regions of holy medi- 
tation are familiar to our readers. It is, therefore, superfluous for 
us to do more than announce a new and elegant volume from his 
pen — ' The Microcosm and Other Poems.' It is rich in its contents. 
'The Microcosm' is an essay in verse on the science of the human 
body ; it is literally the science of physiology condensed into 1,400 
lines. The many occasional poems that follow are the efflorescence 
of a mind sensitive to the beautiful and rejoicing in the true; find- 



ing God in everything, and delighting to trace the revelation of His 
love in all the works of His hand. Such a volume is not to be 
looked at for a moment and then laid aside. Like the great epics, 
it is a book for all time, and will lose none of its interest and value 
by the lapse of years. The publishers have given it a splendid dress, 
and the illustrations add greatly to the attractions of this truly ele- 
gant book." 

The '^New York Times": 

" The flavor of the book, *The Microcosm and Other Poems,' is 
most quaint, suggesting, on the religious side, George Herbert, and 
on the naturalistic side, the elder Darwin, who, in 'The Botanic 
Garden,' laid the seed of the revolution in science, accomplished by 
the patient genius of his grandson. Some of the hymns for children 
are beautiful in their simplicity and truth." 

''The Critic": 

"The long poem, 'The Microcosm,' which gives its name to the 
present collection, has many beautiful and stately passages. Among 
the shorter pieces following it, is to be found some of the best devo- 
tional and patriotic poetry that has been written in this country." 

John Y. Foster, author and editor, in " Frank Les- 
lie's Illustrated Newspaper": 

" In this exquisite and brilliantly illustrated volume, the scholarly 
author has gathered up various children of his pen and grouped 
them in family unity. * The Microcosm,' which forms one-fifth of the 
volume of 350 pages, is an attempt to present, in poetical form, a 
compendium of the science of the human body. In originality of 
conception and felicity of expression, it has not been approached by 
any work of our best modern poets. The other poems are all 
marked by the highest poetic taste, having passages of great beauty 
and power." 



Hon. Justin McCarthy: 

"20 Cheyne Garden, Chelsea, London, England. 
" Dear Dr. Coles — I am surprised to see, in looking through 
your volume, 'The Microcosm and Other Poems,' that you have been 
able to add three more versions to those you have already made of 
that wonderful Latin hymn, perhaps the greatest of all, 'Dies Irae.' 
Certainly it is one of the most difficult to translate. I like your last 
version especially." 

The "Examiner and Chronicle": 

"The title-poem in this exquisitely printed and charmingly illus- 
trated volume, ' The Microcosm and Other Poems,' has been for some 
time before the public, and has received generous commendation 
for the tact and skill evinced in handling a very unpromising theme. 
A poetic description, minute and thorough going of the human body 
was a serious undertaking; but Dr. Coles delights in what is diffi- 
cult and hazardous. He had already associated his name forever 
with the mediaeval Latin hymn, ' Dies Irae,' by publishing no less than 
thirteen distinct versions of it. In the volume before us he gives 
us three more versions. The other poems will not detract from the 
author's previous reputation." 

Hon. Horace N. Congar, lawyer, editor, United States 
Consul at Hong Kong, China, under President Lincoln; 
and Consul at Prague, Bohemia, under President Grant: 

" United States Consulate, 

" Prague, Bohemia. 
"There is one thing, my dear Doctor, about your publications 
which no one can deny. You print your own poetical thoughts and 
■conceptions. They are not copies of some other writer, but stand 



out clear and distinct with your own diction and strength; written- 
for the scholarly and intelligent, they preserve true simplicity with 
the real grandeur of their conception." 

The Rev. William Hague, D. D. (1808-1887), in "Life 
Notes; or Fifty Years' Outlook": 

"The (Newark) 'Advertiser' yet lives and thrives, winning to 
its service the contributions of scholarly writers, among whom we 
have noticed, occasionally, the veteran physician and poet, Dr» 
Abraham Coles, author of 'The Evangel' with its immense wealth 
of critical scholasticism; and the tasteful and rhythmic translator of 
Latin poetry that enriches our libraries, for instance, in the artistic- 
ally wrought edition of the * Dies Irse.'" 

The '' Newark Daily Advertiser": 

" ' The Microcosm' is the only book of the kind in the language^ 
and is well deserving of a place in every library, and might, we 
think, moreover, be introduced with advantage into a\\sc/ioo/s whexe^ 
physiology is taught as an adjunct, if nothing else, to stimulate inter- 
est, and relieve the dryness of ordinary text books. In lines of 
flowing and easy verse, the author sets forth with a completeness 
certainly remarkable, and with great power and beauty the incom- 
parable marvels of structure and function of the human body. 

" This poetic mastery, making ductile the most unpromising ma- 
terials, has had its latest and supreme exemplification in the com- 
pletion of the unique work, ' The Life and Teachings of Our Lord, 
in Verse.' ' The Evangel,' forming the first part, appeared in 1874,. 
•The Light of the World,' forming the second part and completing 
the work, is now, 1884, first published. * * * 

" By common consent the story of the life of Jesus, as told by 
the four evangelists, is the unmatched masterpiece of literature* 



Its literary interest is hardly inferior to its religious. It is pre-emi- 
nently classic. The most fervid encomiums have come from infidels 
and the great literary artists of the world. To taboo it, therefore, 
as something outside of literature, betrays ignorance and imbecility. 
Mr. Edwin Arnold has duly celebrated in his poem, 'The Light of 
Asia,' the Buddhist hero, Prince Siddartha, and has had, it would 
seem, readers among all classes. The life and teachings of Him 
who is 'The Light of the World,* and whose fame fills the ages, 
are surely not less worthy of regard and study by the cultiva- 
tors of literature. The author has striven, it would seem, to make 
his book a veritable cyclopaedia of religious knowledge, so compre- 
hensive is its scope. It ranges through the Old Testament and the 
New. An episode in the first part, outlines nearly the whole his- 
tory of the Jewish people. The poetical proem and the note ap- 
pended thereto are in effective antagonism to Darwinism and cur- 
rent evolution theories. An elaborate note on 'The Logos ' gives 
an historical summary of the prevailing creeds and christologies 
from the earliest times. 

'' It is not too much to say that it is a book deserving of a place 
beside the New Testament in every household, and cannot fail to 
be found a valuable help to every reader and student of the sacred 
•Scriptures." 

The Rev. George Dana Boardman, D.D.: 

'•Philadelphia, Pa. 
"My Dear Doctor Coles — Most happy do I count myself in 
possessing 'The Light of the World.' It has all those same fine 
characteristics which so richly mark 'The Evangel.' It must be a 
source of supreme delight to the accomplished author that he has 
been permitted to complete a work so lofty in design, and so admir- 
.able in execution." 



Rev. Alfred Spencer Patton, D. D. (1825-1888), author^ 
editor of "The Baptist Weekly," etc.: 

" Our good and gifted friend, Dr. Abraham Coles, has every 
reason to be gratified with the highly complimentary notices by 
the press, of his last work, 'The Light of the World,' it being the 
second volume or completion of his life of Jesus, as told by the 
evangelists." 

The Hon. Joseph P. Bradley, LL. D., one of the 
Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States : 

"Washington, D. C, Dec. 14, 1884. 
"Dear Doctor — I have read nearly all of your beautiful book^ 
'The Life and Teachings of Our Lord, in Verse,' and like it better 
the longer I read it. You had two rocks to avoid: on one side pro- 
saic tameness, which might be incurred by too rigid an adherence ta 
the text; on the other rashness in attempting (even poetical) changes 
of consecrated forms of expression — changes which no English or 
American ear would endure. I appreciate the difficulty of the task^. 
and think you have performed it wonderfully well." 

John G. Whittier: 

"Amesbury, Mass., January, 1885. 
" 'The Light of the World' I have read with interest. Thy 
poetical version of the wonderful narrative seems to be conscien- 
tiously faithful to the original, while at the same time it success- 
fully interprets some passages which are not clear to the ordinary 
reader. It will be a helpful book to many, who will realize, for the 
first time, the true meaning and significance of the Lord's words* 
I am, with high respect and esteem, thy friend." 



The Right Honorable John Bright, M. P., England : 

" 132 Picadilly, London, April 30, 1885. 
**Dear Dr. Coles — When I began to read your volume on 'The 
Life and Teachings of Christ in Verse,' I thought you had attempted 
to gild the refined gold, and would fail — as I proceeded in my read- 
ing that idea gradually disappeared, and I discovered that you had 
brought the refined gold together in a manner convenient and useful 
and deeply interesting. I have read the volume with all its notes, 
many of which seem to me of great value. I could envy you the 
learning and the industry that have enabled you to produce this 
remarkable work. I hope it may have many readers in all countries 
where our language is spoken." 



The Rev. Henry Griggs Weston, D. D., author and 
editor, President of the Crozer Theological Seminary, 
Chester, Pennsylvania : 

"Your work, 'The Life and Teachings of Our Lord,' is one of 
the gratifying fruits of the study which the Gospels have received 
since I first began to inquire for helps to their understanding." 

The Rev. Horatius Bonar, D. D.: 

"10 Palmerston Road, Grange, Edinburgh. 
****"! am struck with your command of language, and 
your skill in clothing the simplicities of history with the elegance of 
poetry. It ('The Life and Teachings of Our Lord in Verse') is no 
ordinary volume, and your notes are of a very high order indeed — 
admirably written, and full of philosophical thought and Scriptural 
research." 



The Rev. Alexander McLaren, D. D.: 

" Manchester, Eng., Nov. 3, 1885. 
"Dear Sir — I congratulate you on having accomplished with such 
success a most difficult undertaking; and on having been able to 
present the inexhaustible life in a form so new and original. I do 
not know whether I have been most struck by the careful and fine 
exegetical study, or the graceful versification of your work. I trust 
it (' The Life and Teachings of Our Lord in Verse') may be use- 
ful, not only in attracting the people, which George Herbert thought 
could be caught with a song, when they would run from a ser- 
mon, but may also help lovers of the sermon to see its subject in a 
new garb." 

Adele M. Fielde, missionary at Swatow, China : 

"Those whose judgment is of value have given Dr. Coles' trans- 
lations of the Latin hymns such high praise, that words of commend- 
ation from me would appear presumptuous. I am glad, for the 
world's sake, that the wonderful Latin hymns were written, and that 
Dr. Coles has so translated them, and I am glad for my own sake 
that I have them to read. * * * * I think Dr. Coles has done 
an excellent thing for us in his ' Life and Teachings of Our Lord.' " 

Elizabeth Clementine Kinney, author and poet, wife 
of Hon. William Burnet Kinney; and, by her first 
husband, Edmund B. Stedman, the mother of Edmund 
Clarence Stedman, the distinguished poet and critic : 

" Dr. Coles long ago established a high reputation in both worlds, 
by his matchless translations of that famous old judgment hymn, 
the 'Dies Irse,' and of mediaeval hymns, published under the title of 
'Old Gems in New Settings;' also by his unique original poem. 



■* The Microcosm,' which has glorified by immortal verse this mortal 
l)ody, so fearfully and wonderfully made that every part harmonizes 
with the poet's song. In 'The Evangel' and 'The Light of the 
World,' already noticed by 'The Observer,' while conscientiously 
-adhering to the sacred text, Dr. Coles' frequent elaborate notes give 
freedom to some original suggestions growing out of the author's 
fifty years' devout study of the Bible. It will be well to heed any 
proposition brought forward by one who has been so long a reverent 
student as to have become a profound thinker, and thus an able 
teacher of the divine word. Every thought or idea advanced by 
Dr. Coles will, doubtless, on thorough, unprejudiced investigation, 
be found supported by a reasonable interpretation of Scripture. 
Between the acts of this sacred drama there are also some hymnal 
-excursions, which show the height and depth, the color and light, 
the melody and ecstasy, of the true Christian poet. Through his 
many works, one noble aim is ever apparent, viz.: to 'crown Him 
Lord of all ' who is ' the author and finisher of our faith ' and ' the 
giver of every good and perfect gift.' Noticeable, too, through all, 
is progression, in respect of enlargement by study and thought ; 
of advancement with advancing years, keeping pace with the age 
in increasing light so far as it develops heavenly truth, and 
original conception through truth." 

*' The Book Buyer," Charles Scribner's Sons, New 

York : 

" 'The Hebrew Psalms in English Verse.' By Abraham Coles, 
M. D., LL.D. Dr. Coles has won praise from some of the most 
eminent of critics for his translations into English of the ' Dies 
Irffi,' the characteristics of the work being faithfulness to the spirit 
of the original, combined with a command of rich and rythmic Eng- 
lish. His tastes have led him to translate the great Hebrew classic 
into English verse, a task of unusual difficulty which many have 



undertaken, but in which few have attained even partial success. 
Dr. Coles's work will attract wide attention by reason of its lofty reli- 
gious spirit, its admirable reflection of the incomparably fine flavor 
of the original, its dignified, stately diction and the scholarly care 
bestowed upon every line. The book, moreover, has an additional 
value in the prefatory matter which includes an essay on the char- 
acter of the Psalms, a detailed account of the French, English and 
Scotch metrical versions of the Psalms and a chapter of interesting 
notes, critical, historical and biographical. An admirable steel 
portrait of Dr. Coles serves as a frontispiece to the book." 

Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler, D. D., LL. D.: 

*' Dear Dr. Coles — Your volume on the Psalms is a noble work,, 
and the introduction is rich and sweet as a honeycomb. Two Sab- 
baths ago I gave out from my pulpit your fine hymn, ' Lo, I am with 
you all the days,' and told the congregation some things about the 
author. * * * * You will be quite at home up among heaven's 
choir of psalmists and chosen singers." 

The " New York Tribune ": 

" 'A New Rendering of the Hebrew Psalms into English Verse^ 
with Notes, Critical, Historical and Biographical, including an 
Historical Sketch of the French, English and Scotch Metrical 
Versions,' by Dr. Abraham Coles. Dr. Coles' name on the 
title-page is a sufficient indication of the excellence and thorough- 
ness of the work done. Indeed, Dr. Coles has done much more 
than produce a fresh, vigorous and harmonious version of the 
Psalms, though this was alone well worth doing. His full and schol- 
arly notes on the early versions of Clement Marot, Sternhold and 
Hopkins and others, his sketches of eminent persons connected in 
various ways with particular psalms, his literary and bibliographical 



information, together impart a value and interest to this work 
which should insure an extensive circulation for it. Very much of 
the historical and other matter thus brought within the reach of the 
public is inaccessible to such as have not means of access to public 
libraries, and there is certainly no Christian household in the coun- 
try which would not find both pleasure and instruction in Dr. 
Coles' compendious and altogether unique volume. It may be 
added that in his version of the Psalms he has wisely preserved the 
rhythmical swing and the terse language which distinguish the early 
renderings, and that therefore those who have been reared on the 
old versions need not fear fmding their favorites changed ' out of 
knowledge.' " 

The Rev. Frederic W. Farrar, D. D., F. R. S., Chap- 
lain in Ordinary to the Queen, author of the "Life of 
Christ," etc., in a letter to Dr. Coles : 

" 17, Dean's Yard, Westminster, S. W. 
"The task of versifying the Psalms was too much even for 
Milton, but you have attempted it with seriousness and with as 
much success as seems to be possible. I was much interested in 
your introduction." 

The Rev. A. H. Tuttle, D. D., pastor of the First 
Methodist Episcopal Church, Wilkesbarre, Pa.: 

" 'The Life and Teachings of Our Lord, in verse,' has greatly 
aided me in my efforts to interpret heavenly things. I am glad you 
have lived to complete your versification of the Psalms. I am now 
making a protracted and careful study of the old Hebrew Hymn 
Book, and your work will be of untold help to me. I have already 
read my favorite psalms as you sing them. They are rich beyond 
expression." 



The Rev. Charles S. Robinson, D. D.: 

"I have read many of your really excellent versions of the 
Psalms. It seems to me you have added richly to our available 
literature in that direction. I have been specially interested, also, 
in the prefaced notes. Some of the information is quite new to me, 
and the comments are all good and helpful." 

Hon. George Hay Stuart, the eminent philanthropist 
in January, 1888, wrote from Philadelphia : 

"'The New Rendering of the Hebrew Psalms into English 
Verse,' I orize very much. It is exceedingly good and very suggest- 
ive. The subject matter is of peculiar interest to me. I have been 
brought up, as perhaps you know, in old Rouse's version of the 
Psalms, but never held the view, that many do, that nothing else can 
be sung in the praise of God. Our own congregation, up to recently, 
used nothing but that version. Now we have so far advanced that 
we sing, also, hymns and spiritual songs. * * * * fhe United 
Presbyterian Assembly has recently adopted a new version of the 
Psalms, but I think their leading men ought to see this version." 

The Rev. D. R. Frazer, D. D., pastor of the First 
Presbyterian Church, of Newark, N. J.: 

" My Dear Dr. Coles — I do not know that I can give any better 
expression of my appreciation of your last work than to say that my 
wife and I sat up until after midnight, reading psalm after psalm 
with very great delight. The versification is beautiful, and its beauty 
intensifies by its fidelity to the common version. Hoping the book 
may do much good, in making manifest the beauties of one of the 
most beautiful portions of the Word of God, I am, with great 
respect, ever sincerely yours." 



Charles M. Davis, Secretary of the American Institute 
of Christian Philosophy, Superintendent of Public 
Schools, Essex county, N. J., etc.: 

" Dear Dr. Coles — During the past year I have been reading the 
revised version of the Psalms, in connection with the received. 
Your translations will be a help to me, as I do not understand 
Hebrew. I have read your introduction very carefully, and find it 
contains especially valuable information, as do, also, your occasional 
notes. The psalms that I have read aloud in the family have been 
greatly enjoyed, especially the 107th, 136th and 137th. We are 
anticipating much pleasure from the continuance of this during the 
winter evenings." 

The Rev. A. H. Lewis, D. D., editor of "The Outlook 
and Sabbath Quarterly": 

" I have been greatly interested in the book, not only in the 
success which you have attained in versifying the Psalms, but in the 
valuable matter embodied in the introduction. I have usually found 
it difficult to interest myself in any versification of the Psalms, 
especially in the early efforts by Watts and others. On opening 
your volume, I found myself inclined to read in detail, rather than to 
examine cursorily. It is very difficult to versify Hebrew poetry. 
The success you have attained in expressing the delicate shades of 
sentiment commands our congratulations, and may justly give you 
abundant satisfaction." 

S. W. Kershaw, F. S. A., author, librarian of the 
Lambeth Palace Library, London, England, etc.: 

"Lambeth Library, 12 June, 1888. 

.1 * * * * In this library there is a fine collection of works 
on the liturgies, prayer-book, etc. In your ' New Rendering of the 



Hebrew Psalms Into English Verse,' I am greatly interested in the 
introduction, in reading about the psalms of Clement Marot, and in 
the allusion to the Huguenots. My little book on the 'Protestants 
from France in their English home' was kindly reviewed in one 
of your papers. * * * * " 



J. K. Hoyt, editor and author: 

"Bay View, Florida. 

" Dear Dr. Coles — I have passed a very pleasant Sunday morn- 
ing in looking over your new book. I wish you had invoked the spirit 
of Beethoven, and written the music as well as the words; for the 
proper use of a metrical version of the Psalms is to sing them. 
Still, the book is a wonderful one, and encourages me to believe that 
age is not necessarily a bar to work. I enjoy the notes much, 
and very often find myself turning from the essay to the verses 
referred to. You will leave a melodious monument behind you, my 
good Doctor." 



The Rev. George Dana Boardman, D. D.: 

" My Dear Dr. Coles — I greatly admire your new book for many 
reasons : first, for its rich introduction, felicitously describing the 
character of the Psalms, giving us an exhaustive history of metrical 
versions, presenting critical, historical and biographical notes of great 
value ; secondly, for your new rendering of the Psalms, a rendering 
conscientious, mellifluous, fresh and suggestive; thirdly, and not least, 
for the frontispiece, representing one who has both the David spirit 
and the David music. Faithfully yours." 



The Rev. Lewis R. Dunn, D. D.: 

" I like the 'rhythmic flow' of the words of your work, its truths, 
its thorough orthodoxy, its blending of the results of most recent 
scholarship in lines and notes, its beautiful illustrations of the text, 
and its high intellectual and spiritual tone — a classic in our good 
old English tongue." 



Asahel Clark Kendrick, D. D., LL. D., author, Pro- 
fessor of Hebrew, Greek and Latin in the University of 
Rochester, New York : 

" In your translation of the Hebrew Psalms into English verse, 
you may well be congratulated in having thus nobly crowned 
your series of poems devoted to those themes, which aid the aspir- 
ations of the soul upward toward God and heaven, and may well 
task the highest human efforts. The renderings are in clear 
and weighty verse, fitted to the noble simplicity of the original ; and 
the notes are instructive and valuable." 



George MacDonald, author and poet : 

"London, England. 
" My DEAR Doctor Coles, — I send you by this post a copy of 
my little book on the religious poetry of England. I am sure you 
will find a good deal to sympathize with in it. * * * I am sorry 
to say I have not yet received your book, which I should like muck 
to see after the taste you gave me, sheltered and ministered unto 
by you and yours. Let me hope I may once more be your guest, 
and that you may be ours. Believe in my love and gratitude. 
Yours, with sincere affection." 



The Rev. Philip Schaff, D. D., LL. D., in " Literature 
and Poetry," Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1890 : 

"A physician, Abraham Coles, prepared between 1847 and 1859; 
thirteen versions (of the 'Dies Ira;'), six of which are in the trochaic 
measure and double rhyme of the original, five in the same rhj^thm, 
but in single rhyme, one in iambic triplets, like Roscommon's, the 
last in quatrains, like Crashaw's version. Two appeared anony-i 
mously in the Newark ' Daily Advertiser,' the first one in 1847, 
and a j)art of it found its way into Mrs. Stowe's ' Uncle Tom's 
Cabin ; ' subsequently this version was set to music in Henry 
Ward Beecher's ' Plymouth Collection of Hymns and Tunes.* 
The thirteen versions were first published together with an in- 
troduction in 1859. He has since published three additional ver- 
sions in double rhyme, New York, 1881, in 'The Microcosm and 
Other Poems.' In August, 1889, he made one more version in 
single rhyme and four lines. These seventeen versions show a 
rare fertility and versatility, and illustrate the possibilities of 
variation, without altering the sense. Dr. Coles, in the eleventh 
stanza of his first translation of 1847, had anticipated Irons,. 
Peries, and Dix: 

" ' Righteous Judge of retribution, 
Make me gift of absolution 
Ere that day of execution.' 

* * * "Dr. Abraham Coles, of Scotch Plains, N. J., the suc- 
cessful translator of ' Dies Irae,' and * Stabat Mater,' has reproduced, 
but has not yet (1889), published, all the passion hymas of St» 
Bernard." 



From the New York "Tribune": 

"Dr. Abraham Coles, who died suddenly at the Hotel del 
Monte, near Monterey, California, May 3, i8gi, from heart com- 
plication following an attack of La Grippe, was widely known as 
a scholar, author and linguist. He was born at Scotch Plains, 
N. J., December 26, 1813, and spent the last years of his life there 
on his beautiful place (Deerhurst), which was much resorted to 
by literary and professional people. For more than fifty years he 
pursued his literary studies and work, and became proficient in 
Greek, Litin, Hebrew, Sanskrit and the modern languages," 

From the "Newark Daily Advertiser": 

" As one of the founders of the Newark Library, and the New 
Jersey Historical Society, and on account of his active efforts in the 
promotion of the religious, educational and scientific development 
of the city of Newark, the memory of Dr. Abraham Coles will be 
cherished with lasting affection and respect. 

The Rev. Robert S. MacArthur, D. D.: 

"Few men have recently died whose position and work were 
so unique as those of Dr. Abraham Coles. Seldom are so many 
elements of power united in a single man. He was a distinguished 
member of the medical profession. His poetical genius was as rare 
as it was genuine. There is no kind of literary fame so enduring as 
the authorship of a noble hymn. As the author of the hymn begin- 
ning, 'From Thee Begetting Sure Conviction,' his name will live, 
even as he has described the presence of the Master as continuing 
with His people, 'All the Days. All the Days.' We sang that hymn 
in the Calvary Church when we first entered our new church home. 
We sing it on many of our anniversary occasions. Other hymns 
which he has written are doubtless equally as good, but this one has 
for me a peculiar charm. 



"Many of his translations of the Psalms are worthy to perpetuate 
his name to remote generations. I love to read them aloud that I 
may get the full force of their rhythm, as well as the sweet influ- 
ence of their divine thought. His knowledge of general literature 
and especially of Latin hymnology gives him a special place in the 
thought and affection of students of the early days of the Christian 
Church." 

The Rev. Edward Judson, D. D.: 

"I loved and admired Dr. Abraham Coles very much. I have 
read with deepest interest whatever I have been able to secure from 
his graceful pen. His rendering of the Psalms T prize most highly." 

Bishop John H. Vincent, D. D., LL. D., Chancellor 
of ihe Chautauqua University: 

" Dr. Abraham Coles was a magnificent man, physically, intel- 
lectually and spiritually; he was one among ten thousand. Who 
can doubt the great doctrine of immortality in the presence of such 
a life." 

The Rt. Rev. Phillips Brooks, D. D., LL. D., Bishop of 
the Diocese of Massachusetts: 

"All that concerns Dr. Abraham Coles is of great interest to me, 
for I have long known his work and valued it." 

The Rt. Rev. John Williams, D. D., LL. .D, Bishop of 
the Diocese of Connecticut, Chancellor of Trinity Col- 
lege, etc.: 

" I honored and reverenced Dr. Abraham Coles. I always read 
his delightful writings with pleasure and profit. There was an 
aroma of purity and godly grace about them that was particularly 
attractive. The world is richer for such a life as his, and poorer 
for his loss." 



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